Delimiting Medicine in Limitless Times

Convened by

Bjørn Hofmann
Senior Fellow 2024–2025

Details

Public event, free of charge.

See also the editorial by Bjørn Hofmann: “‘Limits to medicine‘ still needed after 50 years,” published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine.

Medicine has expanded significantly in recent times, with more people being diagnosed and treated for a wider range of diseases than ever before. As a result, healthcare systems employ more professionals, and greater resources are allocated to medical services. Scientific discoveries and technological innovations offer numerous possibilities, yet resources remain limited, and constraints have been identified. How can we prevent the decline of medicine after its remarkable rise? How can we ensure that medicine remains sustainable? And how should its boundaries be defined?

The workshop will begin with an introductory lecture on the vast expansion of medicine, exploring its evolving goals—from merely reducing suffering to actively advancing well-being. It will examine the broadening definition of disease, the disruptive role of technology, and the rise of low-value care. These developments will be contrasted with the challenge of allocating resources to emerging safe, effective, and efficient treatments, raising the critical question of how to set boundaries for medicine to ensure its long-term sustainability. In particular, the workshop will explore whether refocusing medicine’s goal on alleviating pain, dysfunction, and suffering could serve as a meaningful way to define its limits.

Following the introduction, the internationally renowned researcher Tanja Krones from the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (UZH) will address the issue of (de)limiting medicine by presenting and discussing several specific examples and suggest potential solutions.

Program