Based on his experience as a medical intern at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, this non-fiction account of hospital work already shows Crichton's concern with the overreliance on technology, as represented by the artwork on the first edition of 1970 (below left). Later editions dropped the subtitle "The Hospital Explained" (below right).
Ballantine Books editions after 1994 (such as the one depicted to the right above) contain a new author's note commenting on the book 25 years after it was first published.
Fast forwarding 25 more years, Michael Crichton was no longer alive, but Tyler Barrett wrote an article about the state of healthcare 50 years after "Five Patients".