Will healthcare disruption come easy and fast?

“Healthcare is so massively broken, that its disruption will come easy and happen fast”

The quote comes from part of a weekly newsletter that I receive from Peter Diamandis. Peter was the keynote speaker at the ASHP Summer Meeting in Minnesota a few years ago. Truly inspirational. To date it is perhaps the only keynote address that I haven’t regretted sitting through.

Here’s a bit more from the newsletter:

“Healthcare is so massively broken, that its disruption will come easy and happen fast. Hundreds of startups are working to make you the ‘CEO of your own health’ — to augment (or replace) doctors and hospitals.

I expect new AI-enabled healthcare options to be free or near-free, and so much better, that people will forgo traditional medical care in favor of these superior options. This will cause today’s healthcare system to crater.

Think libraries in an age of Google… Think traditional wired landlines in an age of mobile telephony… Think taxis in an age of Uber… Think long-distance in an age of Skype… the list goes on.”

I defer to Peter’s wisdom and incredible insight into the future, but I don’t think disruption in healthcare will come easy or happen fast. No industry needs disruption more than healthcare. However, healthcare appears resistant to the normal rules of the cosmos. The healthcare industry thinks that EHRs and bar code scanning technology is cutting edge. Their idea of mobile is using a smartphone as a drug reference.

There are many things being developed to improve healthcare, but the innovation is coming from outside sources. People are literally leaving healthcare to innovate things for healthcare. It’s a bit wonky, but true. The real test will come when innovators try to integrate their solutions back into healthcare. Good luck, ladies and gentlemen.

Healthcare is years behind other industries when it comes to innovation and cutting edge advances. As an example, I’ve been waiting for the use of pharmacogenomics for nearly 20 years. The concept has been around for a long time, but its integration into mainstream medicine remains elusive.

Peter has much more to say on the issue and I highly encourage you to read the rest. I also encourage you to subscribe to his newsletters. I find their content quite interesting.