Recently, I was on CNBC talking about the
In my book, The Third Wave, I note that healthcare is an industry ripe for disruption. And entrepreneurs—or established companies like Apple—would be well advised to look closely. The healthcare system makes up a whopping one-sixth of our national economy. Yet despite the fast pace of technological innovation, most healthcare incumbents remain firmly rooted in the past—using paper and fax machines when sensors and computers should be the norm.
The healthcare system of tomorrow can’t just be a reengineered version of the present. Hospitals and medical facilities need to fully embrace the internet age to help better coordinate care, improve patient outcomes and cut costs. Fortunately, there are startups who have already begun to address the issues plaguing our system. In 2014, digital health startups raised four times as much money as they had in 2010.
These startups are developing new and connected medical devices that will transform how we think about our health and how we relate to medical professionals. Wearable devices—once the domain of fitness trackers counting steps—will measure our vital signs 24/7. This will give us and our doctors access to real-time data and long-term trends on how our body responds to certain activities and therapies. I believe tracking your vitals will one day be as routine as brushing your teeth, making patients more informed and more empowered than ever before.
Doctors will also be better equipped to treat, diagnose and understand the progression of disease. Through connected devices, they can monitor you at home, seeing everything from your vitals to your medicine intake to your hydration levels. This will cut back on disease mismanagement, which currently accounts for more than 30 percent of healthcare spending. Doctors will also benefit from improvements in IT. Bringing together the disparate pieces of information can vastly lower costs and improve quality by keeping a patient’s various providers informed—technology that has been available for years, but never fully embraced.
Finally, the transition from merely collecting data on individuals to being able to examine data in the aggregate will produce enormous benefits for medical science and research. Population-wide data could unearth patterns that change the way we define illnesses and track epidemics.
But disrupting healthcare won’t be an easy road. While the new age we have entered—the third wave—is characterized by companies that are disrupting major real world industries, it is also an era where those companies will have to work with others. Entrepreneurs in the third wave will also have to depend on partnerships in a way they never have before. Companies that are trying to transform an existing industry will no longer be able to just rely on a great product. Big “real world” sectors have gatekeepers and third wave companies will need to develop productive partnerships with organizations and individuals that influence decision makers, and eventually with the decision makers themselves. As Apple knows all too well, innovators must understand the extensive network of industry regulations that may affect a particular innovation. Companies in the third wave will have to continue to navigate this path carefully. But I hope Apple and others do—our lives depend on it.
