A truly staggering, transformative trend yet to unfold
It's been announced that I will be a keynote speaker at the World HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference, to be held in Washington, DC in December. In particular, I'll be taking a look at the importance of one of the most significant trends that is just starting to unfold.
Twenty years from now, most people will look back and realize that right about now, we had three huge, transformative trends underway: device connectivity, geo-connectivity, and bio-connectivity
Essentially, everything around is about to become linked in -- every device that surrounds your life. My home thermostat is linked to the Internet, and that has changed the scope of how I interact with energy.
Layered on top of device connectivity is spatial intelligence for each device -- vis-a-vis Google Maps types of applications. Think about new forms of energy management built upon sophisticated geographic mapping applications.
Add to this the fact that this type of technology will migrate to devices that will help us better manage complex health circumstances.
I've been writing and speaking about the idea of bio-connectivity and the concept of "hyper-connectivity" for over a decade (before Nortel lamely built a lame marketing campaign around the latter phrase a year ago.) It remains one of the most significant trends that will yet unfold in the health care sector. Our concept of health care delivery will be forever transformed.
Simply put, link the scope of the looming health care crisis to the momentum that will come from Silicon Valley for medical device connectivity, and there are some pretty powerful things happening. Think about what happens as spatial device connectivity comes to everyday things around you -- such as a baseball bat! Read more below. There's a lot going on in this space, and you'd do well to understand it.
Opportunity through the next decade is going to be found by those who will adjust and adapt buisness models, attitudues, structures, methodologies and capabilities to this new reality.
More information:
- HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference
- Read about what happens When Thermostats get connected
- Read the article about bio-connectivity, The Doctor is in around the clock
- Read the article Minds of their own
- Read "Bioconnectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets"
- Read the article Command and Control - Opportunity Awaits Companies that Master Hyperconnectivity
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Computational analytics is another new plastic!
At my keynote to the US Association of Actuaries this week, and for a keynote to LOMA last week (an insurance association conference), I played a series of maps that showed the rapid emergence of obesity in the US population from 1995 to the present day, The maps were provided by the Insurance Information Institute.
I challenged the audience to think about what will happen through the next five years: we will see the emergence of "location intelligence dashboards" that will allow such professionals, to examine in real time, the emergence of new risk factors in their industry.
Location intelligence is coming about as organizations learn to link massive stores of information and research to spatial -- or map oriented (i.e. Google Maps) information. An entire new profession is emerging at the same time -- location intelligence professionals.
This is part of an overall sweeping trend, in which computational analytics play a massive role in the emergence of new careers, businesses and industries. We are entering a time that involves the rapid processing of massive stores of information and unique new ways of analyzing information.I talk about this extensively in my future oriented keynotes and is a topic that is covered in several trends documents on my site.
More information
- Read about "location intelligence" in Five More Trends To Define Your Future
- Analytics is hot : "What comes next?"
- Insurance Information Institute report 0- Obesity, Liability, and Insurance
- Directions Magazine - The Worldwide Source for Geospatial Technology
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bio-connectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets
In a keynote to a health care industry conference last week, I emphasized that in the high velocity economy, new business models, products, markets, and careers are appearing at a fast and furious pace. And it's by watching for, observing, and understanding these trends that you'll discover opportunity for innovation.
Consider the rapid emergence of new markets. As new scientific discoveries occur at an ever more rapid pace -- due to the massive global collaboration with Web 2.0 as well as new information research sharing paradigms within established peer review based research methodologies -- there are countless new products and markets that are being brought to life.
Take that reality, and apply it to any industry. Say, health care. Then parse that industry down into dozens or hundreds of sub-markets, and you'll discover forthcoming new, billion dollar markets.
Consider, for example, the concept of bioconnectivity, which will be one of the most significant trends -- and new markets -- to play out in the next twenty years in the health care industry. What is it? Quite simply, the marriage of the computer chip and connectivity technology to medical devices, and ultimately, to people.
One small submarket that will come with bio-connectivity is the emergence of smart, intelligent, home-based medical devices. Have you ever seen a Sharper Image catalogue, or its online Web site? It's the ultimate source for unique gadgets and toys of every type. Think about what the catalog might look like in 10 years, when its full of home-based bioconnectivity devices aimed at the baby boomer set.
Digital Connect Magazine, which monitors development with home and business connectivity devices, suggests that U.S. revenue from digital-home health services will quadruple to exceed $2.1 billion by 2010.
The two fastest growing areas? "Wellness monitoring services" and "e-health services" will each achieve a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 per cent. The former allows doctors to remotely monitor a patient's condition (such as their insulin levels), while the latter provides active medical care (such as an intelligent sub-dermal medicine patch, which not only provides a patient automatic ingestion of a particular pharmaceutical, but allows the doctor to monitor its effect.)
It might sound like science fiction, but it is a very real development. Sit back and think about the business models and opportunities that flow from such a transformative trend. Link it to another trend: a whole bunch of baby boomers are getting older, sicker, and the health care system is breaking down. Hospitals will go virtual, extending their services through bio-connectivity, so that non-critical care boomers can be treated and monitored at home. This is slam-dunk obvious!
It's BIG TREND. Its' but one of many.
Simply put, our new reality is that science, and hence markets, industries, products and services, are evolving and changing at a rate never seen before.
And that's where your own opportunity for innovation comes from!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Health care trends and innovation
I was the opening keynote speaker yesterday in Dallas for a get-together of the Strategic Marketplace Initiative. This is a group that represents a variety of health care providers and hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical companies and other health care suppliers. There were some heavy hitters in the room -- even WalMart was there, which is indicative of the role it is seeking to carve out in the pharmaceutical side of things.
The group is devoted to trying to continue to improve the efficiency and quality of the supply-chain within the health care industry. My talk examined the future of health care; I've done such talks recently for the Blue Cross Blue Shield National Office, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Providence Health Care and the American Society for Health Care Risk Management.
There are certainly some big challenges. Consider these realities:
- total health-care spending - by individuals, companies, the government - reached $2.3 trillion in 2005
- health care spending is set to double to 20% of GDP within the next 10 years
- 400,000 nurses are set to retire by 2010
- 76 million baby boomers will be flooding the system for care
- lifestyle diseases wlll continue to drive stress into the system
At the same time, the health care system must innovate at a furious pace to keep up with the trends that are set to impact it in a significant way, such as:
- the rapid emergence of new technologies
- massive skills challenges (both demographic and scientific!)
- new business models and “competition," particularly as retail concepts come to the industry, and "customer" expectations continue to increase
- combined with the rapid emergence of new knowledge, methodologies, treatments, pharma, driven by rapid science
The sad thing is that little of the political debate occurring in the US on how to fix the system has to do with the real trends which are occuring; it tends to focus only on the difficult and challenging issue of insurance and coverage.
My talk stirred a lot of debate, and was very well received. There's an overview of some of the trends that I covered in my FUTURE MEDICINE Prescriptions for 21st Century Healthcare trends summary.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
High velocity trends in the pharmaceutical industry
I'm here in Las Vegas today, about to provide the opening keynote for Pharmalink 2007.
This is an annual meeting of senior executives -- mostly C-Level, Sr. VP's -- from major pharmaceutical companies. It's a forum where they can examine the challenges, issues and opportunities that come from a greater integration of the supply chain within the world of health care.
It's a tough issue to crack -- there are a lot of vested interests, long-standing business models, inertia towards change, and built-in routines. There's a lot of sophisticated technology that is and can be used ; and yet, there still remains a tremendous amount of inefficiency in the U.S. health care system.
My keynote will focus on the theme, "what do innovative organizations do", and will play into several trends:
- concentrate on adaptability: in the longer term, change resistance retires out of the economy. The current generation of 35 and under staff in the health care system will rapidly adopt EHR (electronic health records) and all other forms of technology. Initiatives to date have been held back because of slow-to-act, change resistant boomers; however, as they leave the system, the rate of adoption of new ways of working will soar.
- prepare for intensity: business cycles are getting faster, and R&D is too. It's the ability to adapt to the sudden emergence of new markets and products that is critical
- attitude with agility: business models are set to change; any industry that has a lot of wholesalers and distributors will find massive, fundamental, structural change to be a given on a 10 year horizon. Understand that, accept it, and work with it.
- massive connectivity changes everything: pharma will be impacted in a huge way as everything, including drugs themselves, has sensor, location and intelligence awareness built in. Innovative around that -- and the concept of bioconnectivity, and big opportunities can be found
- structure with flexibility: volatility is the new normal. Think how quickly China and quality became linked; build a team and structure that can act fast, think fast, and react fast.
There's an entire theme on these issues in my Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast book -- so it ties in nicely!
More information
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Trends and big transformative changes. Example: health care
The view of the future by most is often short term oriented.
In my keynotes, I often put into perspective the big, massive, sweeping transformations that can change entire industries over the longer term. That's one of the best ways to begin a process of thinking of innovation, and in finding creative solutions to challenges as well as opportunities. There's not enough long term thinking today; there is simply too much short term hype.
In this short video clip, I take a look at the world of health care, and the transformation that is occuring as we move to a world of personalized medicine.
- Watch the video
- read Future Medicine: Prescriptions for 21st Century Health Care
- read "Are you watching the major transformations, or just the piddly stuff?"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A bit of a backgrounder on my work in the health care sector/
Partial client list
Waters Corporation • MDS Nordion • American Society for Health Care Risk Management • VHA Georgia • Blue Cross Blue Shield national office • Association of Organ Procurement Organizations • Phamalinx annual conference • Health Care Industry Distributors Association • Trillium Health Care • Providence Health Plans • Harvard Pilgrim Helath Care • Canadian Medical Association • Glaxo Wellcome • American Academy of Opthalmology • North Carolina Medical Managers Group • Canadian Organization For Advanced Computers & Health • Health Administration Association of BC • Ontario Hospital Association • Roche Diagnostics • Essilor Eyecare
Areas of trends and innovation focus
• managing health in an era of constraint and challenge • opening up the minds of health care workers and adminstrators to the potential of the future • a futuristic examination of impact of digital technology and connectivity of health care • rethinking health care delivery in the digital age • business case issues for medical adminstrative staff on digital business • motivational kickoff/keynote for staff events • medical company sales force training and motivation • innovation -- new business models, exploiting new opportunities in the health care sector • a look to the future • strategy sessions
Highlights
- Jim recently spoke to 600 employees of a major health care supplier, from the perspective of "A Day in the Life of a Patient in 2030." He took a look back at the massive and huge transformative changes which occurred in the world of health care from 2006 to 2030.
- Jim provided the opening keynote for about 3,000 health care professionals at the annual American Society for Health Care Risk Management in San Antonio, TX, with an indepth futurist view of key health care trends
- co-authored "Good Health Online" a book that examined the role the Internet can play in our own health care, long before this became an issue on the radar of the health care industry
- Jim has provided workshops for senior managers of health care organizations, focussing on the issue of health care services in the digital age, and the impact of e-biz on the health care industry. He provided senior management of Blue Cross/Blue Shield Florida with an interactive workshop -- and they were so thrilled with the result that they had him down for four more sessions. He has now walked 400 of their senior staff through workshops that have helped them to assss the future of health care
- Jim helps health care professionals and executives understand the massive change occurring in the world of healthcare, and think about ways that healthcare services are provided and delivered in a time of rapid change
as a futurist, he takes a unique look at the opportunties and challenges in the world of health care as change envelopes the industry at a a furious pace, and helps administrators and medical professionals conceptualize the strategies and issues that need to be pursued
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Are you watching the major transformations, or just the piddly stuff?
I spoke in November in Iowa to a group of energy cooperatives, providing some different insight into the future of energy supply in terms of not what's happening today, but in terms of "what comes later" -- say, five, ten or fifteen years out.
Likewise, I'll be speaking to the Healthcare Industry Distributors Association at the end of the month. Many of the folks in the room will be focused on the short term trends that surround them; they won't be thinking about the massive transformation that is really going to impact their industry over the longer term.
That's the problem that people usually have when they try to figure out the future. They tend to focus on the the small, incidental, day-to-day, one-to-two-to-five year trends that they can see around them.
I take my time looking for the “big transformations” – the sweeping, massive, significant types of change that causes everyone to sit back twenty years later and ask, “Wow! Where did that come from?”
And in the world of health care and energy, that involves phrases such "preventative medince" and "bio-refineries:" that's where you'll really find the future.
Consider, for example, the world of health care and life sciences. Certainly everyone is aware that current trends indicate that the challenges are vast and the opportunities are significant. There’s a looming shortage of skilled workers, dramatic rates of discovery of new knowledge, the rapid emergence of new medical methodologies, and other forms of significant change.
And yet, with everyone focused on these issues, most people are missing the big, long range transformation that is underway: we are in the midst of a fundamental and significant shift in healthcare philosophy and medical research that makes every other trend within this industry pale in comparison. We’re rapidly moving from a world in which we “react” to disease and illness after it has happened, to one in which we will be doing far more in advance to “prevent” specific health care problems from occurring in the first place.
That's one of the trends I've covered in my FUTURE MEDICINE Prescriptions for 21st Century Healthcare trends summary.
The driver for this massive change is the emergence of extremely specialized and highly personalized medical treatments based upon your own particular DNA. Preventative medicine has already become a part of the health care system: for example, a simple pap smear test has resulted in a 70% reduction in the date rate from this disease. Yet, it is estimated that clinical diagnostic spending of this type makes up only 1% of global health expenditures.
DNA “sequencing” is set to change that, as it allows researchers to examine an individuals DNA, and determine their risk for developing particular diseases or medical problems. Already, a test has been developed that examines a few hundred strands of DNA, from which a prediction can be made of your risk of developing cystic fibrosis. The test accurately identifies the unique DNA strand in 88% of Caucasian CF and 69% of African Americans. Expect the degree of accuracy to only continue to improve in coming years.
That’s but one example of a “deep transformation change” that gets little attention. Consider another critical industry: energy supplies.
In the last few years, we have certainly seen a lot of price volatility as a result of the unexpected, such as Hurricane Katrina, rapid new demand growth from Asia, and commodity market fluctuations often driven by speculation. One result of volatility has been a renewed interest in bio-fuels, and in particular, the opportunity that exists from the creation of ethanol from corn and other crops. Ethanol has grown quickly to become a rather significant industry; and yet, what we are seeing today involves only baby steps.
The big transformation that is occurring involves a rapid changeover from “first stage” bio-energy companies to “second stage” bio-refinery companies.
The first stage consists primarily of agricultural companies, using their insight into the science of agriculture to develop production systems that convert grain to ethanol. The second group are the big oil companies, who are bringing to the industry their insight into how to build big, production oriented, cracking and distillery methodologies to the world of ethanol. In doing so, they will be transforming a high velocity industry into an faster and more complex industry involving “bio-refineries.”
The transition is both massive and seeping in scope. Royal Dutch Shell Europe, for example is involved with a “2nd generation” project that involves a capital investment of $2,000 per ton to construct, compared to $190 ton for a first generation bio-fuel plant.
The switch to bio-refineries will be significant, with some estimates suggesting that the oil major will be able to grab upwards to 17% of the global biofuel market within a few short years.
It’s by watching for and identifying such massive shifts : a switch from reactive to preventative medicine, or the emergence of a bio-refinery industry, that you can spot real areas for innovation and creativity.
That’s why, when looking at the big picture, you should always step back and look for an even bigger picture.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Generational change and the future of health care
I woke up this morning with a pretty big sty on my eye; I could feel it coming on last night. Big, puffy, and sore : I couldn't get my contact lenses in, which is kind of a drag since I do a talk for SAP today (Theme: Velocity, Agility, Complexity and Flexibility: The Four Key Drivers for Competitive Advantage: more on that to come.)
At 6:45am this morning, I went down to the home office, and e-mailed my eye doctor asking what I should do. At 6:47AM, he emailed me back with a few suggestions, and advised me to come in at 9:30am. Talk about customer service!
My eye-doc is a bit younger than me -- and he's grown up with technology. In terms of his medical practive, he has always been at the leading edge of the curve in terms of adoption of new equipment and technology. He has had quite a consultative approach with me through the years, taking a cumulative series of hi-resolution digital pictures of my retina for example, in order to be able to show me the slow and steady (and normal) impact of aging. (And, in effect, helping me get over the fact that I increasingly need to use reading glasses.)
So it is with his rapid response on e-mail; he commented in our exchange this morning that "instead of a Blackberry, I use an ultraportable Thinkpad. Wireless at home, wireless at work, wireless at Starbucks -- the 3 places where I live 95% of my life. :)"
As a medical professional, he's wired up, interactive, and providing a different type of medical service. To him, interactivity with the patient is a good thing, and all part of the service. That's innovation right there.
The 21st century medical professional is:
- collaborative: the patient is a partner in the process: they know we are empowered with information, and they work with us to help us understand how to best use it given our medical circumstance
- responsive: yes, they have a life. They use technology to balance how they spend their professional and personal time, and in doing so, provide rapid customer service.
- interactive: the online world plays a key role in the service element; from e-mail appointments to a prescription that includes an online information source
- progressive: there's a flood of new ideas and methodologies coming into the world of medicine. They adopt it, understand it, and utlize it to improve health care delivery
I wrote about this trend with my Future Medicine: Prescriptions for 21st Century Health Care overview, noting that one of the 10 biggest trends to impact health care in the future will be the impact of such interactivity on medical delivery: " The entire medical system is set to be transformed with the entrance of GenConnect (those born after 1990) into the health care system. As they take on careers as medical professionals and administrators, they will bring with them a flood of new ideas, innovation and different ways of thinking. Health care institutions currently clogged with organizational sclerosis cannot keep pace with today's demands. But GenConnect's aggressive attitude towards change will quickly break down this sclerosis."
As the Gen-Connect generation -- the ultimately wired crowd -- gets involved in health care delivery, we are going to witness a massive and significant transformation of the system. And that can only be a good thing!
Read Future Medicine: Prescriptions for 21st Century Health Care
EyeDoc: Port Credit Optometrists and Dr. Peter Rozanec
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10 major health care / pharmaceutical trends
I'm off to do a half day session with a major player in the pharmaceutical industry; I've compiled a list of the 10 key pharmaceutical / health care trends that they should be thinking about.
I'll be walking through these issues, and will then lead a workshop focused on the question: how do we ensure we have the agility, insight and execution in order to survive and thrive in this period of rapid change?
I've done extensive work within the healthcare sector over the last many years; this is one industry where the rapidity of scientific driven change is simply unprecedented. Think about what is really happening around us, and think about what needs to be done:
- A transformative shift - Personalized medicine drives the agenda: the big picture item is that we are in the midst of a fundamental, significant shift in healthcare philosophy and medical research: from a world in which we “react” to disease and illness after it has happened, to one in which we will be doing far more to “prevent” health care problems through highly personalized medicine.
This is primarily coming about because of furious rates of discovery related to genomics. This more than anything will dominate the health care / pharmaceutical research / delivery agenda through the next years.
- Knowledge growth becomes exponential; pace of innovation / discovery picks up: medical knowledge is now doubling every eight years. Expect it to be doubling every two years by 2010 -- with the result that medical professionals will be struggling to an even greater degree in keeping up than they are today. Research taps out practical results faster than ever before. The key for everyone is tapping into global collaborative discoveries / keeping up / developing agility for rapid innovation, response, development, and implementation. For pharmaceutical and health care suppliers, it's about rapid development and rapid time to market.
- Discovery moves offshore: for a good chunk of the pharmaceutical industry, the proces of R&D, approval and application will increasingly move offshore, particularly to China / India, due to different regulatory requirements (or lack thereof). Also, such things as stem-cell research limitations, US visa policies and other factors play a factor in the diminishing role of the US as a pharmaceutical industry hub. The pharmaceutical industry will continue to spend a huge amount of time learning to work within the new shifting zones of influence in the world of research.
- Theory into practice becomes the primary focus; operational excellence is key: already, health care can’t keep up with the rate of scientific discovery: “Because of the rapid discovery of new medical knowledge, you'll get the most up to date treatment today only 50% of the time” is one key stat to remember. Tomorrow, the prime focus in the medical community will be how to ingest and incorporate this new knowledge into practice. In terms of the pharmaceutical industry, the key goal will be “operational excellence,” i.e. ….from the Financial Times 6 Jun article on Roche, “…the Avastin story also highlights a central issue for innovation-led companies: how to make sure advances in the laboratory are brought to market quickly and efficiently.” There’s a whole line of thinking emerging in that article and elsewhere that puts into perspective that collaborative excellence in managing complex teams is quickly becoming a key and critical success factor.
- Skills fragment and a battle for skills drives decisions: hyper-growth in knowledge and new medical discoveries means that every medical profession is becoming more specialized, leading to a greater degree of niche-oriented medical skills than we see today. In the pharmaceutical industry, small biotech companies will continue to dominate the research agenda over big-pharma, by focusing on ever tighter niche markets, as well as by discovering disease-oriented drugs based on specific genetic markers. Skills fragmentation results in challenges, but so does the looming baby boomer retirement wave. A war for medical talent drives much of the agenda of the industry by 2010, and the battleground is global in scope.
- Complexity partnerships take on an increasing role: because of the skills crisis, rapid discovery, need for operational excellence, knowledge growth and discovery, big/medium the pharmaceutical industry will continue to look to shed additional component pieces of the discovery / regulatory approval process; outsourcing takes on a whole new meaning.
- Bio-informatics emerges, core competence becomes critical: Microsoft estimates that at least 50,000 people worldwide are working in the field of bio-informatics – the folks who are developing the highly sophisticated computer databases and computational methodologies that can do the billions of measurements on an individual patient that is leading us into the era of personalized medicine.
- Bio-connectivity becomes the next big thing: a new generation of intelligent, Internet-connected medical devices flood the industry, providing new opportunities for monitoring and management of difficult health care conditions. Furious pace of innovation occurs here as consumer tech trends (collapsing product lifecycles) come to medical devices and medical technology.
- Hospitals get “de-physical”, customer service comes to the industry: today, a health care institution is thought of as the building or campus that makes up its constituent parts. Tomorrow, it will be defined by the reach of its virtual network, and the hospital will be thought of as the extended community network by which a good portion of its services are provided. Walmart is coming to health care; the Minute-Clinic business model and others like it mean that we are seeing a revolution in customer service come to the industry.
- Generational attitude transforms the system: the entrance of Gen-Y -- kids who are in 2005 aged 15 -- into the health care system -- will bring a flood of new ideas, innovation and new ways of thinking helping to break some of the organizational sclerosis that has clogged up the opportunity for change in the world of health care.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bio-engineered body parts, the Cold Store and personalized medicine....
I'm doing a very futuristic talk tomorrow for a major health care company; I'll be talking from the year 2030, taking a look at where we are in the world of health care some 25 short years from now.
A couple of the bullets from the presentation:
- "There was now a huge industry of personally engineered bio-body parts – and the never disappearing group of baby boomers like me was certainly taking advantage of this stuff to continue living an active lifestyle!"
- "I was taking a little pill that would directly attack the virus I had picked up -- it was based on my own particular gene profile and would target the darned condition pretty directly."
- "The pill bottle linked into my home network grid in order to interact with the prescription drug company. They had specifically engineered this medicine the day before for my own bio-code, based on a quick sampling of my blood and sinus condition that was done at the local Cold Store."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10 Big Realities for Health Care in 2010
I've spent a huge amount of time through the last many years, talking in countless industries about the trends that are at play and which will impact us in 2010 and beyond. I've been working these into the industry pages of my site, and will dump them on the blog as I do, since they provide a useful context for the many people searching for trends -- and who stumble across my site.
Here's the big issues for healthcare:
- Knowledge growth becomes exponential -- medical knowledge is now doubling every eight years. Expect it to be doubling every 2 years by 2010 -- with the result that medical professionals will be struggling to an even greater degree in keeping up than they are today.
- Theory into practice becomes the primary focus. Because of the rapid discovery of new medical knowledge, you'll get the most up to date treatment today only 50% of the time. Tomorrow, the prime focus in the medical community will be how to ingest and incorporate this new knowledge into practice.
- Skills fragment. Hyper-growth in knowledge and new medical discoveries means that every medical profession is becoming more specialized, leading to a an greater degree of niche-oriented medical skills than we see today.
- A battle for skills drives decisions. Skills fragmentation results in challenges, but so does the looming baby boomer retirement wave. 400,000 nurses are set to retire in the next 10 years. A war for medical talent drives much of the agenda of the industry by 2010, and the battleground is global in scope.
- Cost cutting becomes the focus. With the industry in a state of perpetual crisis due to skills shortages, new knowledge and unprecedented demand from aging baby boomers, health care institutions focus on trying to aggressively rip cost out of the system. Re-engineering of processes and methodology comes to a forefront within the system.
- Difficult philosophical questions rule administrative decisions. North American medical consumers now use up far more health care resources than they did 10 years ago, particularly because of the result of new discoveries, treatments and diagnostics. With ever-upward growth, the industry will start to challenge current assumptions, and medical professionals will demand an intelligent and reasonable debate on the difficult philosophical questions that surround the system.
- Bio-connectivity becomes the next big thing. A new generation of intelligent, Internet-connected medical devices flood the industry, providing new opportunities for monitoring and management of difficult health care conditions
- Hospitals get de-physical. Today, a health care institution is thought of as the building or campus that make up its constituent parts. Tomorrow, it will be defined by the reach of its virtual network, and the hospital will be thought of as the extended community network by which a good portion of its services are provided.
- Home health care and caregivers dominate the agenda. With the emergence of bio-connectivity and the de-physical hospital, home health care will come to dominate a huge part of the health care industry. There will be less focus on critical care health care beds, and more focus on opportunities to re-engineer the system through family and caregiver involvement in the home context, with bio-connectivity playing a big role.
- Generational attitude transforms the system. The entrance of Gen-Y -- kids who are in 2005 aged 15 -- into the health care system -- will bring a flood of new ideas, innovation and new ways of thinking into the health care system, helping to break some of the organizational sclerosis that has clogged up the opportunity for change in the world of health care.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"E-Health: Demand May Finally Catch Up with Supply"
...from Health Data Management Magazine.
"....patients increasingly will use personal computers and Web-connected devices to monitor their own conditions, Johnson says. Some patients already perform self-monitoring tasks such as taking blood pressure at regular intervals. Soon, for example, they’ll be able to do such tasks as use a hand-held ultrasound device to manage a complicated pregnancy and transmit information over a secure Internet connection to a clinician devoted to overseeing remote patient care...." [ article ]
I wrote about this back in 2001 in my htc column "IT and healthcare: more than a marriage of convenience" ] [ article ]
I still think one of the most interesting companies in this field is HealthHero, which makes a variety of Internet-connected medical devices. The sad thing is that while all kinds of political leaders in every nation are talking about how we must "fix" the health care system, none of them are taking Internet-based home health care into consideration. [ link ]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
