Medicine must embrace technology to unleash benefits of science, says chief adviser

“Something funny is going on” when it comes to using information technology in medicine, says Mark Walport, chief scientific adviser to the government. If the scepticism of the profession is not overcome, he warns, society will fail to reap the fruits that medical science can offer.

Walport made his comments during the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians on 15 October. The oration and dinner is given every year with proceeds from the estate of William Harvey, whose 1628 tome described the circulation of the blood and marked the beginning of clinical …