Don Simborg

Don Simborg received his MD degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and served as a full-time faculty member of both the Johns Hopkins and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Schools of Medicine. His research and academic focus is on the use of computers in medicine for electronic medical records and medical decision-making. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals in his field. He was selected to serve as a member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Sciences. He left academic medicine to become the founder and CEO of two venture-funded companies involved in medical informatics. In summary, he has a combination of backgrounds in science and technology that has enabled him to review and understand the literature on the multiple disciplines bearing on the question of What Comes After Homo Sapiens?

“The Fourth Great Transformation” is Don Simborg’s second popular science book on human evolutionary biology, the first being What Comes After Homo Sapiens? published in 2017. He is a physician trained in Internal Medicine with a focus on medical information technology as a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and then at the University of California San Francisco, where he also served as its Chief Information Officer. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in his field. He is the founder of two electronic medical records companies and is a founding member of the American College of Medical Informatics. He served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies of Science and has served on the boards of multiple health information technology companies. He received his MD degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The Fourth Great Transformation aims to bring to the lay reader an understanding of the evolution of human species and how we differ from our closest living and extinct relatives in a readable and entertaining story. Secondly, the book explains the two most advanced tools created by Homo sapiens, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, and speculates how they may be instrumental in creating the next human species.

A new human species will soon come to co-exist with us. This new species, ‘Homo nouveau,’ will be created using artificial intelligence and genetic engineering; both important tools which are in their infancy. Not only are the science and technology relatively new, but their implications in the mind of the general public are also only just beginning to enter our collective consciousness. This book expands on the research done for the author’s previous book, What Comes After Homo Sapiens? Written by a medical professional and independent consultant to healthcare IT companies, The Fourth Great Transformation explores the questions of what this new species will look like, how we as humans will get along with them, and the potential threats and opportunities that will come along with genetically modified humans. Written by a medical professional and independent consultant to healthcare IT companies, this book explores the questions of what this new species will look like, how we as humans will get along with them, and the potential threats and opportunities that will come along with genetically modified humans.