Will 2016 see connected health transformation?
Will 2016 be the year of connected health transformation? That was the topic of a LinkedIn discussion that I weighed in on with the following comment.
Domain experts often make bad predictions (see https://mhealthtalk.com/cazitech/home/favorite-quotes/). Better is to hire futurists who look at many scenarios, extrapolated trends, R&D status, patent portfolios, hiring patterns, and market accelerators & inhibitors to understand what levers can help clients encourage a “preferred” version of the future. A better question is, “WHAT health transformation do you WANT to occur in 2016, and how do you get that?”
DRIVERS include public policy and consumer awareness that our profit-driven, fee-for-service model is broken. Add the “potential” of cutting spending in half (We spend twice that of other advanced nations) while also improving outcomes (We live sicker & die younger). That $1.5 trillion per year savings could help reduce the debt, lower taxes, fix infrastructure, or fund education and other public investments. While other policy decisions may save billions over 10 years (results not realized while politicians are in office to take credit), true health reform can save trillions EVERY year a politician is in office, a huge incentive. BUT, there’s a catch.
INHIBITORS include the corrupting influence of big money in politics and the fact that the medical industrial complex (hospitals, insurers, drug companies, testing companies & equipment providers) spend twice as much the military industrial complex on lobbying to protect their $3 trillion annual revenue, which is 18% of GDP. Overcoming that resistance requires a strong public outcry. Will that happen in 2016?
I have dozens of articles on this topic at Modern Health Talk, but the most relevant to this discussion include:
- Transforming our Flawed Healthcare System
- Chipping Away at Healthcare Special Interests Yet?
- Population Health and Patient Engagement
- 101 MiniTrends in Health Care
- Moore’s Law and the Future of Healthcare
- If Air Travel worked like Health Care
