Apple Watch shows how Medical Devices and Services will move Down Market

Via CNBC: Apple Watch can now detect your irregular heart rhythms and other problems

Here’s how it works:

Following the trajectory of Moore’s Law, medical devices will keep getting smaller, cheaper, more accurate, and easier to use. This trend has four important implications:

1. CONTEXT: Continuous sensor monitoring will give doctors context and remote insight into what’s contributing to out-of-range readings, helping patients make healthier lifestyle decisions about diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management (the pillars of health & wellness);
2. CONSUMERS: Increasingly, more and more medical functions will move down-market from doctors and specialists in clinics and hospitals to consumers at home and on the go;
3. REMOTE MONITORING: Telehealth services can and will be located anywhere: across town or across state lines or international borders, once laws and regulations allow that; and
4. PERSONALIZED MEDICINE: Artificial Intelligence will give meaning to the mountains of accumulated sensor data and give actionable insight when and as needed. Eventually, AI will play a more active role and even respond to patients’ health conditions directly. AI will even replace some of the work of doctors, causing many to resist.

There’s natural resistance to these trends within the medical community, because profits — perverse profits — are at stake. How much? Because the US spends about $3.5 trillion/year on healthcare, which is twice what other advanced nations pay for better care and outcomes, the potential is to cut that spending in half and thus save well over $1.5 trillion each year.

In my perfect world, politicians would value the economic benefits of making strategic public investments in our nation’s health and wellness. That would result in improved worker productivity, GDP and global competitiveness. If they saw healthcare as a public utility, they’d establish a different set of incentives and fund enabling research. But that’s a big IF, because they’re too corrupted by wealthy special interests. That’s why I often say fixing our broken healthcare system requires fixing our political system, and why I write so much about healthcare policy and politics.

A CAUTIONARY NOTE

My short article above comes from the perspective of a technologist and futurist looking at the possibilities. But futurists aren’t wedded to one version of the future; they consider multiple scenarios. For that reason, I must also share the dark side that comes with immense financial opportunity, and greed.

Stephen Brill in his 38-page TIME report, Bitter Pill: Why High Medical Bills Are Killing Us, described a medical industrial complex that includes the medical device industry. That industry is the subject of Bleeding Edge, a Netflix documentary. The danger is when regulatory oversight is relaxed and industry is given free reign.

 

If the medical device safety issues raised in this documentary disturb you, Dr. Zubin Damania, host of the ZDoggMD podcast, adds more perspective in this next 14-min video. He explains the conflicts of interests of industry-sponsored medical trials and the dangers of lax FDA oversight. With that insight, you’ll know what to ask your doctor before surgery.

 

Now I should note that Apple Watch ECG, AI, and Telehealth examples I mention as the subject of this post are NOT part of the medical device industry featured in the documentary. They could, however, succumb to the same influences of greed and avarice. That’s why we must craft appropriate public policies and regulatory oversights of them too. The challenge is doing that with the best interest of the public in mind — without excessive influence from special interests.