This morning I went for the first general checkup or physical that I’ve gone to since I was in my early teens. I do not know why I waited a decade-and-a-half to do something I am supposed to be doing yearly, I guess it just never really concerned me to do so.

Of course my doctor emphasized the importance of quitting smoking, which I don’t deny I really should stop doing. Other than catching every little virus or infection going around (centered mostly around my respiratory system – go figure, being a smoker) I’m generally pretty healthy. At least, that’s how it appears from this preliminary examination, I have yet to go get some internal-diagnostic tests done.

The importance of, or reason for having yearly checkups done was never really clear to me. My doctor explained it in a way that made sense. He told me that he treats the patient – not the paper. (I’m paraphrasing his words, of course.)
It gives them (doctors, in general) a set of reference data which assists them to spot trends.

It reminds me of the analytics I do for a living – although computers have no need for a doctor’s level of professional compassion, naturally. The more targeted-data that can be gathered on any given issue, the better. Observe that data over time and you can sometimes spot a trend – from there you can start to deduce a cause for the effect being investigated. Some people call it debugging, but it can be also applied outside of the software world.

As I’ve learned today – it works for doctors, too.

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