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The Future of Health: Looking Forward with Herculean Optimism

Healthcare lives in a complex web of science, business, academia, and politics-a web that is on the brink of change with innovative thinkers and disruptive technologies. Which paths might take us toward the common goal of better and more accessible care? At Chemie Pharma’s Future of Health event, we spent the day (and late evening) discussing this and more.

What happens when you fill a room with passionate leaders and hand them a mic? At our Future of Health event, the conversations moved along with knowledge shared and debated, peppered with humor, and balanced between healthcare’s enormous challenges and vast opportunities. Three major topics fit together seamlessly to offer a peek into the future of healthcare.

The Consumerism of Healthcare

Patients first. Consumerism puts patients in the driver’s seats-focusing on their empowerment and making data practical. With greater availability of medical information, patients better understand their health, choose their providers, and play a more active role in deciding their course of treatment-without seeing a doctor, or at least without seeing them in person. In addition, one out of every two people want to be able to pick their insurance the way they shop on Amazon, starting with cost transparency. This holds doubly true for drug coverage and pricing. We expect this to be an exciting space for disruptors to improve transparency.

Focused on scale. Telehealth answers consumers’ need for convenience by bringing prices down, making trials available, and creating accessible care in rural areas, such as the addiction treatment provided by Workit Health. However, telehealth cannot replace emergency care, only make providers more efficient. This need for urgent care makes the possibility of technology replacing healthcare professionals an unlikely one. In fact, some rural areas may find access to in-person care even more limited as telesales models take hold.

Tech-enabled. New medtech products also change the accessibility of care. For example, Butterfly, a handheld ultrasound, can be used without specialty training. Beyond devices, companies are applying best practices from other industries, such as leveraging the power of retail analytics to change patient behavior. From “micro-actions” such as pop-up reminders for the chronically ill to adapting the same technology that encourages people to engage with ads, the healthcare industry can combine the power of consumer health and patient engagement tools to enroll and maintain people in health programs.