“Once you have a whole body PET scan, there's not a lot of value often in doing a physical examination or taking out your stethoscope because the information on that scan tells you everything you need to know. The classic medicine history examination is giving way to a whole new form of medicine where we are using a variety of different technologies.”

As a noted physician-scientist and nuclear medicine physician at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Michael Hofman has built a career on using the latest technology in the pursuit of better cancer treatments, especially those using positron emission tomography (PET) scans and precision medicine. COVID-19 is accelerating adoption of these approaches, and he sees other treatment trends on the horizon. 

“I think it's going to become more mainstream – where the doctor acts as an advisor as part of the patient team, he tells Mike. “And we share all the data that we're accumulating with the patient, we advise of the pros and cons, and then the patients go off and do their own research and come back with ideas as well. And we becomes part of a team working on the shared goal of achieving the best outcome.”