What healthcare innovation needs to succeed
Lessons from medicine’s frontlines
Atul Gawande recently tweeted about a great Vox story on Big Tech’s trendy foray into the healthcare space.
As our company’s physician founders know all too well, healthcare is ripe for disruption: taxpayers, providers, and our patients have long deserved better.
VC led health-tech investment continues to grow with nearly $23 billion of funding fueling the digital health sector since 2011 (1). The total disclosed deal value for healthcare private equity in 2016 was $36.4 billion, reaching its highest level since 2007 (2). These are positive trends driving healthcare innovation.
From small startups like ours to Big Tech’s ambitious proposals, it’s all hands on deck.
I’ve long contended that technology can and should be a catalyst of change in healthcare delivery, but as a new chapter opens on health innovation I fear that a deeper reality often gets lost in the hype.
We can’t forget that our doctors, therapists, and nurses are the gatekeepers in whose hands innovation will fail or succeed — they need pragmatic and cost-effective tools to deliver quality, patient-centered care. When you or your loved one experiences real illness, all the bells and whistles are out the window.
Think about it. When did you last experience sickness, see tragedy, or feel frailty in those around you? In those instances we default to the purest of our emotions. When you face that sort of insecurity no smart phone app or machine-learning algorithm can truly replace the graciousness of an empathetic smile and a warm hand.
Technology is powerful, but technology without an able and willing agent to implement it is useless. If we seek to truly fix healthcare delivery we must not forget its subtleties. Beyond the innovation and investment this is fundamentally about human lives.
Call me a skeptic, but this isn’t Snapchat.
Reforming the healthcare system will be a collaborative effort. We owe it to ourselves to thoughtfully improve it together. I’m glad that industry giants from The Valley to Omaha to HQ2 will join us at the drawing board to design lean and innovative solutions to this fundamentally unsustainable system.
To Big Tech, as a physician and an entrepreneur, I welcome your commitment with open arms. As you evaluate your next venture just remember the people on the front lines and the patients from all walks of life that they care for.
