BMJ 2020; 368:l6964 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6964 (Published 06 January 2020)
- The multimorbidity trend presents challenges to the entire medical profession, from general practice and community care to acute and long term hospital settings. Greater specialisation, especially for hospital based doctors, has improved our ability to treat single diseases, but unless we react to the increase in multimorbidity it will disadvantage the increasing proportion of patients with multiple seemingly unrelated diseases.
- Good vertical integration exists from bench to bedside for a single condition or disease, but there is little or no horizontal integration between diseases that often coexist. This will require an intellectual shift and rethinking some elements of our research, training, and practice in virtually every discipline.
