WELL STATES HEALTHCARE
Without question, our healthcare system in the United States needs to change. As we witness digital disruption overtaking nearly every industry, with more customer-centric solutions that deliver what we want, just how and when we want it, it grows harder to accept the very real disparities between what we need and what we’re given in our own personal healthcare options.
For the vast majority of the country’s population, healthcare is far too expensive. Major injuries, illnesses or accidents can bankrupt individuals and families. The system is set up to leave the individual frustrated and without necessary treatment, often dragging the patient through bloated bureaucracies and a never-ending maze of referrals and interminable waiting periods.
What’s more, patients too often have to choose whether they can afford treatment or manage the time constraints of seeing the doctor in between work and other obligations, and many times the decision is to forego medical care completely. This has the unfortunate consequence of driving healthcare costs even higher, as more money is spent on life-saving care and ongoing treatment rather than the much more cost-effective practice of preventive healthcare.
The individual may feel helpless in the face of massive medical corporations and insurance companies, but the truth is every party is equally frustrated with exponentially rising costs and stop-gap measures that don’t address the roots of the problem.
Politically, healthcare has proven to be a divisive and partisan issue, with no side willing to compromise to the point of creating lasting change. Interestingly, this has left an opening for tech companies, and companies experimenting with cutting edge technologies, to step up and lend their expertise to this complex problem.
Here are just a few ways we’re seeing the impact of their collective efforts:
Access to Care
Older and lower income patients can struggle with simply getting to medical appointments. In fact, a study by the National Institute of Health showed 3.6 million Americans miss a medical appointment every year, due to unreliable transportation. To combat the problem, Uber and Lyft have built partnerships with healthcare organizations and hospitals alike, helping individuals more easily navigate rides to medical appointments. It’s not just a benefit to the patient seeking care, missed appointments cost the industry up to $150 billion dollars a year.
MRI Imaging
Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) group has teamed up with NYU School of Medicine’s radiology department to find a way toreduce the time of an MRI scan. This would have the mutual benefit of making MRIs more comfortable for the patient, while also freeing up expensive imaging equipment to give more patients an opportunity to use it. Facebook engineers are attempting to use AI-based neural networks to recognize the structure of the image and fill in views that were not included. It’s risky to be sure, as any errors in pixels could result in a misdiagnosis, but as imaging technology grows more sophisticated it is entirely feasible this will be a smart solution that offers significant benefits.
Employee Health Insurance
Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway made headlines earlier this year when they announced a joint effort to deliver a new kind of healthcare offering to their employees. The three leaders of these organizations – Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffet – are titans in their respective industry and the market took notice, with insurance and medical stocks plummeting the day of the announcement. Why? As these companies have proven, disruption can be quite successful, and by turning their sights toward employee healthcare it was clear to everyone watching that this may be one of the strongest chances of changing the status quo and delivering true disruption to insurance, while providing measurable benefit to employees and these companies.
It’s an exciting time in healthcare, as innovation is primed to disrupt the industry and provide meaningful change and better value to patients and practitioners alike. Quality healthcare and medical treatments should be equally available to anyone in need, and as we incorporate the expertise of outsiders and new technology, we may just find better health today and for the generations that follow.