Ever since 2003, I've been expecting use of technology in health care to take off. In the past two days, I've seen 5 good reasons to believe this is the time it will finally happen:
1. Government is leading adoption, as it did with PCs in the 1980s. The Veterans Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services are allowing federal beneficiaries and employees to access and download their medical records. At this week's Health 2.0 conference, vendors and organizations rushed to demonstrate easy ("blue button") access to and mashup of this data with their applications that make it easy for ordinary people to browse and use years of their medical record data. Yesterday, an HHS official vowed to make HHS the NOAA of health information. That's a powerful metaphor. It reminds me of when the Department of Defense made those monster buys of PCs in the 1980s, which helped cement the PC's place as an indepensible business tool.
2. Useful sensor data is bubbling up, starting from the hackers. Creative geeks are acquiring hardware, such as the Zephyr, originally developed for military or sports applications, and figuring out ways to get their vital signs and other data into their personal health records. Mobile phones with GPSs and accelerometers are able to provide a surprisingly useful log of our physical activity. Early adopters provide a fertile testbed for lots of cool health maintenance apps, many of them being developed for mobile phones.
3. Health activities are becoming social activities. My wife River now has an iPhone app that reports her lap times and bike ride routes to my email. A plethora of startups are borrowing tech from games to transform people's exercise and diet activity from bragging rights to high scores in fun, competitive Web sites and apps. The pressure's on vendors such as Garmin, maker of my bicycle computer, to liberate its data for social uses and not just build another Web silo for it.
4. Tech is making the health care system more transparent. The winner of this year's Health 2.0 Launch competition was Castlight Health, which claims to be able to suss out the actual cost of health care services. Provided that providers don't figure out how to game or thwart information services like these, they will provide employers, consumers with high copayments, or who pay for their own health care, a way to get value for their health care dollar. (And also help make it easier to figure out the quality of the care delivered.)
5. A network of trust may be emerging to help health care players share data more securely. At Health 2.0, Resilient Network Systems described a visionary way for different providers to share information in a trusted manner. Without a system of trust built on solid technology, the web of health care providers will never work together effectively. There's a lot more work to be done here, so it may require other forcing factors, such as federal health care reform regulations. But overall, it's much closer than it was a year ago at Health 2.0 San Francisco.
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