The Value of Systems and Complexity Sciences for Healthcare

Joachim P. Sturmberg, MBBS, DORACOG, MFM, PhD, FRACGP, is conjoint associate professor of General Practice in the School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medicine, at The University of Newcastle in Newcastle, Australia. He is a graduate of Lübeck Medical School in Germany, where he also completed his PhD. Since 1989, Sturmberg has worked in an urban group practice in the Central Coast of New South Wales. His research focuses on understanding the complex interconnected features of person-centered healthcare. Together with his collaborators, Sturmberg proposes that a truly functional health system ought to always focus on the needs of the person/patient across all domains affecting health -- local health delivery services, local and regional social and economic infrastructure and services, as well as in all portfolios at the national policy levels. These complex interdependent features of a person-centered healthcare system are described by the health vortex model. Sturmberg's current research focuses on operationalizing the health vortex model, integrating the physiology of health with health care delivery, the socioeconomic domains affecting health, and the impact of policy decisions on health and the healthcare system. Together with Howard Federoff, Sturmberg organized the 1st International Conference of System and Complexity for Healthcare. Sturmberg and Carmel Martin are joint co-editors in chief of the Forum on Systems and Complexity in Medicine and Healthcare as part of the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. Sturmberg co-chairs the Complexities in Health Special Interest Group in WONCA (World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians) with Martin and Jim Price.

Part I. The foundations of systems and complexity medicine.- 1. Heath and disease as emergent processes.- 2. The technological advances behind systems medicine.- 3. Individualized care - today and tomorrow.- Part II. The complexity of common diseases.- 4. Multi-organ physiology.- 5. Infectious diseases.- 6. Cancer.- 7. Heart disease, diabetes and obesity.- 8. Neurodegenerative diseases.- 9. Multi-morbidity.- Part III. Ethics and Education - the Challenges for Systems-based Medicine.- 10. Learning to cope in a complex adaptive environment.- 11. Regulatory and legal challenges.- 12. Ethical implication of systems medicine.- Part IV. Change in an Adaptive Organization.- 13. The dynamics of change.-  14. Flexible interdisciplinary teams.- 15. Health care - a whole of society perspective.