The Time for Individualized Healthcare

It is clear that we are on the precipice of a transformation in healthcare. There have been significant announcements across the spectrum of the healthcare ecosystem. A few highlights include mergers in an effort to align incentives and redefine the delivery of primary-care, strong policy initiatives to accelerate health data interoperability and portability, a continued push toward value-based care programs to help manage healthcare spend, and bold moves by technology giants to introduce platforms that enable and foster innovation of patient-centered digital health solutions.

While an individual’s healthcare experience is not as frictionless and as digital as it could be, a significant portion of the burden and challenges of the current healthcare paradigm have fallen on clinicians and the care team. As the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a leading voice in the call for change in healthcare, notes:

“Despite advances in medical technology and research in recent years, health care in America has evolved into a vast, fragmented industry, beset with huge problems of access and quality. Millions of Americans still lack health insurance — and for those that can get care, paid for by their employer or through other means, the quality of care is not what it should be.”

At Carium, we are driven to help with the transformation and enable better healthcare experiences for individuals, providers and for payers. We believe the time is now for this change and are focused on leveraging the current confluence of medical and technological advances to enable individualized healthcare.

There are a number of factors that are individually meaningful, but when combined, form a tsunami-sized catalyst for change:

1. EMR/EHR APIs: The high-rates of adoption and implementation of EMR/EHR systems and the digitization of medical records enables a digital platform that can be leveraged for innovation. This was not previously possible when records were still predominantly paper-based. The Promoting Interoperability program signals the clear regulatory direction to open up access to health data.
2. Ubiquity of smartphones: A large percent of the population has a smartphone. The mobile-revolution has not yet occured in health care the way it has in other consumer verticals. There is a huge opportunity to put health care in the hands of individuals.
3. Rise of wearables: Personal health tracking and monitoring devices are getting more sophisticated and accurate, some having been FDA approved and clinical grade. We will soon have access to clinically-useful data on a continual basis, allowing a whole new approach to ongoing collaborative care, vs. episodic care management.
4. Power of genomics: The first full mapping of the human genome occurred in 2003 and was estimated to cost $2.7B. Since that time, the cost has dropped dramatically and is headed to $100. There is a massive opportunity to use genomic data to provide both preventative and interventional care on a large scale. This is a critical element of bringing the individualized healthcare to the forefront of care. Nothing is more unique to an individual than their DNA sequence.
5. Availability of big data: The combination of data captured in EMR/EHRs as well as the large data sets captured from wearables will enable the derivation of insights and guidance to both individuals and providers.
6. Commoditization of artificial intelligence: Advances in computing technologies and maturation of AI approaches can enable predictive analyses and individualized machine-learning can unleash population health at an N-of-1 scale.

We are excited by the transformation that is possible by bringing these pieces together — and that is our focus.

Recently, the AMA launched their Health Care Interoperability Challenge, sponsored by Google. The focus of the AMA’s challenge is to enable a more interactive and continuous-care relationship between individuals and their physicians, as well as allow for patient-generated data to be used in clinical settings, to drive better care plans and improved outcomes. We believe our mission and goals are well-aligned with the AMA. We have entered a submission based on our upcoming product and are excited to participate in the challenge! You can view and vote for our proposal here: https://ama-ihmi.org/posts/10951.

Please reach out if you would like to help us on our mission, or are interested in learning more about what we are doing. We look forward to collaborating with the community to help move healthcare forward, and to make each individual healthcare journey the best it can possibly be. It’s your health and we are here to help!