The Future of Digital Analytics in Healthcare

I recently read The Economists's March 2017 article, "A Digital Revolution in Health Care is Speeding Up. "  Several of the developments they address have me excited about this field for the first time.   We are approaching a new frontier of better outcomes, healthier lives, and I would anticipate, greater personal responsibility.  Coincidentally, the government's actions to reduce our mandated healthcare benefits are likely to accelerate consumer use of preventative care resources in this category, simply out of necessity.  This will be a boon for the makers of Fitbit and other wearable health technology providers as well as those big data gatherers who leverage the feedback from these systems and related data sources.  Overall, the new digital tools and firms outlined in the article are intended to empower patients and payers alike, above traditional service providers, thereby giving customers a substantive, information-driven approach to supporting their individual care.  What consumers and payers do with this information remains to be seen, but the potential benefits appear to outweigh the risks, even if that means treading on rocky ethical grounds to find them out.

Recent concerns in my immediate family have helped to hone my appreciation for how and where additional data gathering and analysis can improve the healthcare system.  For nearly two weeks in May I observed my father's ICU doctors struggle to figure out why he could not wake from his sudden onset of sleepiness.  Taking full advantage of their morning rounds, I asked about their methods and thought processes in diagnosing him, and and quizzed them about the odds in favor of various causes, side effects, and outcomes for him.  I didn't necessarily agree with their approach trouble-shooting his condition, but I understood it.  Their work was informed to a point by statistics, but as they say, beyond that, each patient is unique.  I wondered how much so.  We are all built with essentially the same machinery, and there are over 7 billion of us on the planet.  Surely amazing and more accurate predictions could be produced with the amount of data we can generate from our combined medical care records, smart devices, health and wellness apps, and drug treatment tracking tools in order to net out at better path for care.  At least, this is what I was thinking every time the doctors told me as my father continued to sleep, unwake-able and without any firm explanation.  Multiple costly MRIs, a spinal tap for rare diseases, blood tests, x-rays, and all the while we lost days and risked his ability to breath and move independently when he woke up. Healthcare, I found out, is a slow business, and there is fuzzy math when determining the best path forward.  But what if it were driven more by odds, and data, and in more granularity; could it be sped up with healthier outcomes?

The Economist article got at several of these points, approaching the problem from the perspective of various commercial healthcare stakeholders.  Citing one healthcare investor Andy Richards, the authors outline the competitive field as follows:  

a) Traditional Products/Service Innovators: big pharma, hospitals, and med tech equipment companies like Seimens, GE, and Phillips

b) Incumbent Players: health insurers, benefits providers, and single-payer systems

c) Lastly, Tech Insurgents: small entrepreneurial innovators and deep pocketed players like Apple and Amazon alike

Traditional players face the threat of big data-gathered learnings revealing new cost savings, more and less effective drug treatments, or the replacement of traditional drugs or devices altogether in favor of alternative solutions.   These same firms could chose to harness digital intelligence tools and use them to refine their products and services, rather than sitting on their laurels.   The drug manufacturer, Sanofi, is doing just that. They have partnering with Google's Verily Life Sciences health-care venture in creating Onduo, a firm that aims to help diabetics make better lifestyle and diabetic drug use choices.  Sanofi is a traditional pharmaceutical company known for their insulin drug Lantus, which they lost patent protection on in 2015.  

Another investor points out that the digital revolution will finally put the consumer/patient solutions at the center of pharmaceutical strategy,  refocusing it to where it should have been all along.  It will be interesting to see how that shift plays out.  Will simple solutions that could have existed decades ago be unearthed with great fanfare, and will big pharma manage to come out still come out smelling like roses?  This will require a great deal of strategy and planning on their part, if the suspicions that they've done otherwise are in fact true.  

The article goes on to explore how different diagnoses tools and more effective care can reduce hospital stays, forcing a transformation in profit sources, and driving care more 'remote' to phone or online options, while realizing better health benefits and savings for customers and insurers.  I'm not sure I'm entirely in favor of remote care, but the rest sounds amazing, and entirely on point for what I was imagining.  

Take for example DeepMind, a British AI research firm, also a Google firm, has created an app that will anticipate the patients who are the greatest risk of sudden and fatal loss of kidney functioning.  This is brilliant, and saves lives, medical staff time, and reduces stress for all around.

Depending on where you live in the world the tools being developed range in complexity and purpose, and the need for connecting doctors and patients in a timely and affordable manner is being explored with a variety of technologies.  

All in all, its incredibly exciting, and a win for people everywhere, so long as our information is used to support us, and not subordinate us to an insurer's profits.  

I will close with this thought.  America is overall a highly educated population.  We generally all know what we should do.  What happens when the data starts proving that we aren't doing what we should do, and exactly how much that will cost our insurers and ourselves?  Will it be used to legitimize a dystopian Big Brother paternalism?  Free will vs. State or corporate money?   I am anticipating a healthy policy debate to come.