Put Healthcare in the Hands of Consumers

As a society, we need to work harder, and deploy more capital towards putting medical innovation in the hands and homes of consumers. This is not a new concept; in fact, we were doing this over a hundred years ago but throughout the 20th century we started focusing more on hospitals and clinics. Today we take for granted innovations such as the consumer bandage, J&J’s Band-Aid, (introduced in the 1920’s) providing a sterile wound dressing which people can apply on themselves, or Listerine, developed by Joseph Lawrence, (introduced in the late 19th century) first for hospitals and then for home use to bath wounds and kill germs. The fastest, least expensive and most personalized care comes from our families and us. We are the frontline of care and the more we can use technology to put prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in the hand of the consumer the healthier society will become at a significantly lower cost than we incur today for healthcare.

We need to move beyond first aid and make a quantum leap towards putting more healthcare in the hands of individuals. In order to do so three things need to happen:

• Electronic Health Record (EHR) standardization, cloud-based, and fully available to the individual to whom that data belongs, and any healthcare provider treating them – I have written before that people must be granted legal right to all of their health data and medical records. Further, we must be able to upload our own data to our medical records, which we share with our physicians. This should be not only a record but also a searchable and analyzable database of our personal health history.
• Consumer versions of most (if not all) diagnostic devices used by primary care, healthcare providers – Many readers who did not balk at my vision for EHRs will balk at this topic, but it is essential and achievable. This does not ring the end of primary care physicians but it does change their role. Measuring accurate blood pressure, pulse or blood glucose in the home is already common, as are home otoscopes. We can push this further to more advanced diagnostic equipment with improved technology ensuring safety, accuracy and reduced cost. Historically, Moms are the biggest users of consumer diagnostics and empirical evidence suggests they are open to more.
• With all this new consumer collected data, stored in our personal EHRs, we need to be able to use that data effectively. Technological development needs to drive towards intelligent computers, utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide initial primary care assessments. These algorithms will eventually refer people to specialists based on information provided by the patient and in-home diagnostic devices.

Putting more care capability into the hands of the consumer allows medical professionals to focus more time, energy, and capital on the most serious, debilitating disease and reduces cost burden on society as a whole. I encourage entrepreneurs, corporations, and investors to focus on the three areas called out above, and give families and individuals the power of healthcare at home.

About John:

John's goal is to unite and empower society to create life free from debilitating disease, by improving access to high quality healthcare through the transformative promise of technology. John is always excited to connect with new people and discuss ways we could use technology to make a healthier society.