Cell

Glitch. There’s a central idea at the core of the latest medical thriller by Robin Cook titled, Cell. What would happen if we used smartphones and artificial intelligence software to provide improved healthcare? Cook presents iDoc, a smartphone app that provides patients with 24/7 monitoring along with the capability to interact with a digital physician avatar created by the user. What if there is a glitch? What could possibly go wrong? Protagonist George Wilson, a radiology resident reprised from earlier novels, stumbles over mishaps from iDoc and risks his career to investigate what is happening. The dialogue is clunky as usual with Cook, and the prose can be tedious, but the idea and the action here offset those flaws, more in this novel than in many of his earlier books. Read a sample, and if you can be patient with the prose, chances are you’ll like reading this entertaining and frightening story about a possible future of healthcare. Rating: Four-star (I like it) Click here to purchase Cell from amazon.com.