Technology Alone Won’t Save Healthcare, But It Will Redefine It

When companies first try to explore the potential of new technology, they tend to think within current frameworks, but often miss its deep implications. Echoing the quote attributed to Henry Ford—“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”—we start using new technology to improve what we already do before realizing that we should question what we do in the first place.

With hindsight, the most significant effect of data-driven technological progress has been the transformation of the system (or game) itself. Consumers have experienced this change in many industries such as media, transportation, and retail. So far, this has yet to happen in healthcare. Our use of technology in healthcare has been superficial at best. For example, we’ve used IT systems to computerize paper processes that take filing cabinets, load their contents into computers, and call those electronic health records (EHRs). 

Today, a number of powerful technologies allow us to define some of healthcare’s greatest challenges in terms of data and how we manage it. Through genomics, wearables, and digitally connected consumers, we can generate health “signal” at a scale we had never dreamt of. Through advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), we have the ability to reason about and utilize this data at an unprecedented scale in order to predict, prevent, and treat disease more effectively. 

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.