Perhaps no other sector is ripe for disruption quite as much as healthcare. The internet and wireless devices have transformed global connectivity. More individuals on earth own a cell phone than have access to a toilet. Genome sequencing is becoming exponentially faster and cheaper.
The intersection of rapidly advancing technology and medicine will be the catalyst for transformative change that will change the way we prevent, treat, and manage disease. But this creative destruction of the healthcare industry as we know it is not just inevitable, it is a moral imperative for ensuring the public good.
The healthcare system in the United States is broken. An unacceptable percentage of Americans are uninsured. Over the past decade, the effects of rising incomes on American families has largely been offset by the rising costs of care. Increases in healthcare spending are due in part to the use of costly medical technology, which has classically been limited to high tech therapeutic tools that can increase life expectancy but at a price that is projected to make healthcare spending almost 20 percent of GDP by 2017. And increased costs have not led to equivalent gains in heath status or life expectancy.
But technology, thanks in large part to the pervasive use of mobile phones, has distinctly new target: you. It is no longer a tool for physicians and techies alone, but instead the new digital health revolution puts patients and consumers first– it gives anyone who wants it, information and tools to be knowledgeable about and monitor their health. There are currently more than 10,000 health and wellness apps available for the iPhone, ranging from the fitness platform Skimble to medical translation tool MediBabble. Provider tools such as electronic health records and remote patient monitoring also have the potential to lower costs and facilitate communication between provider and patient. The potential of these exciting developments was recently chronicled in Eric Topol’s new book The Creative Destruction of Medicine.
Change won’t be easy, but we have a reason to work for it and a market hungry for it. Rock Health and Code for America have an important role to play in cultivating the development of new, consumer-oriented health technologies. While the problems we face are by no means minute, I am optimistic of the role that startup technology companies have to play in the marketplace: light, agile pollinators. I am reminded of the words of the Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan civil servant and Nobel Prize winning environmental activist who said, “We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. But we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can.”
This post is written on the theme “Disruption is a Public Service,” it is part of a series of posts on Code for America’s four themes of 2012. CfA invites anyone to submit a guest post on a theme.
