Why Wireless Health Matters
By Robert B. McCray
The inadequacies of current approaches to delivering healthcare service are well known and they must change. In the United States, for example, we spend far more on health care than other countries. Yet we still rank at or near the bottom of industrialized nations’ health outcomes. One study states that outcomes are actually worse in communities with higher Medicare spending. Moreover, rising healthcare costs are eating away at the household incomes of average Americans.
For developing economies with aging populations, chronic diseases are on the rise. Current approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases are not effective, affordable or sustainable.
The solution to these problems lies not in continuing to deploy the current anti-competitive, labor-intensive, inconvenient, obscenely expensive and non-transparent model for health care services and delivery. For the benefit of rich and poor countries alike, we must migrate to a connected, affordable, personalized and accountable 21st century model of healthcare. That new model is wirelessly enabled health.
Fortunately, the technological tools are at hand to do this. All we really need is the will and commitment. Through the actions of the individuals and institutions (both public and private) that shape the modern world, we can vastly expand access to affordable high quality health care, and, in the process, empower individuals to better maintain their own health, thereby reducing demand for healthcare service.
This revolutionary transition need not be driven completely by altruism. There is fantastic wealth to be created by leveraging the power of wireless connectivity to satisfy the most fundamental human need after nutrition, water and shelter. We have incredible knowledge of human health locked up in millions of databases and doctors’ minds. Providing that knowledge to billions of people who have access to wireless services is a business opportunity not to be missed.
I believe the drivers for creating access to wireless healthcare are as follows:
• Just as the Internet has made everything from books and music to the physical properties of sub atomic particles instantly accessible to anyone with computer access, the same can be done for the world’s medical knowledge.
• Cell phone subscribers (five billion and counting today) are the largest distribution channel ever created. They will have access to this knowledge.
• Properly organized and presented, wireless health information will enable free diagnosis of a majority of human diseases. Similarly, the search for the correct diagnosis for more complex disease and those requiring special tests will become more efficient. These changes will free up resources for therapeutic purposes.
• Knowledge in the hands of innovators and purchasers moves power from sellers to buyers and destroys or disrupts entrenched economic interests. Witness the effects of global supply chains (Walmart), Internet commerce (Amazon) and digital music (Apple).
• Communication and community building platforms such as Twitter and Facebook in the hands of citizens are equally disruptive to entrenched political interests (Arab Spring).
• All of these tools empower individuals to take better care of themselves and to assume more responsibility for their own health. This is critically important since a large portion of our health care costs are driven by excess demand, which could be reduced if individuals, families, communities, business and societies had easy access to information, products, services and applications that coax them to make better lifestyle choices.
How does this translate into the goal of affordable access to health and health care?
Some of the world’s most successful non-healthcare companies and business sectors are focused on this emerging market. Qualcomm, P&G, mobile operators and the entertainment sector are involved in the space. These companies and other “outsiders” will help committed insiders to disrupt the healthcare sector’s fragmented, paternalistic and anti-competitive approach to service. Inevitably, this increased transparency and the power of communities will help ensure that political power is used to enhance rather than hinder necessary policy changes in healthcare funding and regulation.
These forces will deliver the information that citizens need to maintain personal health to their handheld devices. They will deliver useful preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic information and services to every human being within reach of a wireless network. Existing businesses will be disrupted. More of the value that is inherent in the massive stores of life sciences knowledge will be accessible to billions of human beings and their caregivers.
Wireless health is the enabler of these changes. It makes the world’s medical knowledge accessible and brings accountability to healthcare institutions. Without it, the world’s populations will be poorer and sicker.
Robert B. McCray
President & CEO, Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance
Chairman, Alliance Healthcare Foundation