BRAINSTORM HEALTH
How Technology Is Revolutionizing Health Care
Brainstorm Health 2019: Shifts in the Landscape
With new entrants such as Amazon and Walmart taking bold steps in the health care sector and major acquisitions by Cigna and CVS, business models and the entire health care landscape are undergoing seismic shifts.
One of technology’s most significant potential healthcare opportunities is providing patients with better preventive care so that some medical emergencies, like heart attacks, can be averted.
Bruce Broussard, CEO of health insurer Humana, explained Tuesday at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Health conference in San Diego that he believes technology will help patients receive help during medical crises.
For instance, he cited the growth of Internet-connected devices—smartwatches among them—that can track heart rates as potentially revolutionary because they allow for monitoring vital signs in daily life. Medical companies would be better equipped to understand a “360-degree” view of the patient by getting up-to-date patient data.
Broussard also pointed to the importance of telemedicine technologies, like video conferencing, letting doctors virtually visit patients in their homes. He cited a hypothetical scenario of a patient who lives in a rural area taking a virtual meeting with a specialist doctor complemented by an in-person visit from a nurse. This combination of virtual doctors and physical nurses could let health care providers do “all the things you could do in a physical office, in a home.”
“This extends the healthcare system,” Broussard said.
Despite the rise of telemedicine, Paul Jacobs, the former CEO of Qualcomm and now the CEO of wireless tech company XCOM, argued for medical professionals visiting their patients’ homes.
Jacobs recalled the case of a telemedicine patient who mistakenly believed that they had a migraine and wanted a prescription for a specific medication. Eventually, a doctor visited the patient’s house and discovered black mold. After the mold was removed, “the migraines went away,” Jacobs said, concluding: “The personal touch—the human touch—is still essential.”
