The digitization of our healthcare system is well under way, but several obstacles frustrate efforts to take full advantage of the health information revolution. Perhaps the most important is our difficulty moving patients’ data, so that records can follow patients as they go from one site of care to another. [Dr. David Blumenthal is the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a national health-care philanthropy based in New York.]
Historically, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have been known more for their relentless supply efficiency than their tech chops. But with the easiest savings already in the past, OptumRx and rivals such as CVS Health and Express Scripts have begun mining their huge troves of prescription data in search of economies.
In less than a week, the digital health market received both an unprecedented endorsement and a biting criticism. Earlier this month, England’s National Health Service (NHS) made an announcement to provide millions of patients in the U.K. with free tech for conditions like heart disease and diabetes. And here in the U.S., just days before, the CEO of the American Medical Association (AMA) described the digital health industry as peddling apps and devices that "impede care, confuse patients and waste our time."
As director of the Institute for Population Health Improvement at the University of California, Davis, Kenneth W. Kizer brings plenty of experience in the use of technology to help manage large populations. A physician by training who is board-certified in several specialties, Dr. Kizer was California’s top health official before serving as undersecretary for health in the Department of Veterans Affairs in the 1990s. At the VA, he is credited with modernizing the nation’s largest health system, including adopting one of the first major electronic health records systems. [Registration required.]
For every moonshot, there is an endless list of insidious problems plaguing the industry that don’t make headlines, but are silently killing our system (and patients), inefficiency by small inefficiency. Healthcare providers, and in particular hospitals, need new ways of doing the old processes, or better yet, need to rethink what it means to deliver care altogether.
"There is a disconnect between the problems of those who need the most help and the tech solutions they are being offered," said Veenu Aulakh, executive director of the Center for Care Innovations, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit that works to improve health care for underserved patients.