AI-Driven Transformation for Healthcare Organizations and Individuals
AI is transforming healthcare — will you "react" or "adapt"? The transformation is not only on the leaders but on each of us individually.
Disruption for healthcare continues
A few years ago, all the talk about the future of healthcare centered around "the Disrupters" — the entrance of Amazon, Google, and Apple into healthcare was fascinating, including their value (or lack of it), and it presented an opportunity to invest in companies leading our health and careers. Fast forward to today: could we have envisioned AI and the advancement of technology? Yes — those advanced souls working behind the scenes could see the value and worked to bring it forward.
Artificial intelligence has arrived in the workplace "with the potential to be as transformative as the steam engine was to the 19th-century Industrial Revolution." If your career spans the beginning of the internet, you remember a similar environment of feelings, disagreements, and uncertainties about its future value and impact on humanity. AI now presents as the internet once did.
Healthcare consumers typically interact with the health system only when they are sick or injured. But with rapidly advancing technologies, the future of health will most likely focus on well-being and prevention rather than treatment. Patients — now consumers — will be actively engaged in their care, both from a healing and a prevention perspective. The transformation consumers have grown accustomed to in other sectors is slowly moving into our health and healthcare space.
Individually and as a profession
Anticipate that AI and data will be enablers to:
- Identify illness early
- Provide for proactive, healthy intervention
- Treat the whole person holistically — physical, mental, emotional, and social
- Reduce or eliminate chronic illnesses
Can you envision cheaper healthcare, less complexity (no prior authorizations), the patient at the center of care rather than the health plan or case manager, and risk monitored to the point of elimination?
Will the need for the provider and payer division continue to exist? What will become the future of the payer — could it become an active leader in providing health resources for consumers and improving population health? My answer is yes, and consumers will lead.
So, what's the holdup, and what is needed?
One aspect: data. This is where all healthcare professionals enter the room — Health Informationist, Health Informaticist, Data Analyst, Data Scientist, and more. Expect radically interoperable data — not only provider and payer data, but consumer data, community data, and social media data. Healthcare is generally not "a leader" in technology, so each of us, acting individually, must reinvent this digital transformation for our career while no one really knows for sure what the future holds.
Expect new disrupters. New businesses and new business models will build on outdated archetypes and redefine the health landscape. Data is key.
AI-Driven Transformation for Healthcare Organizations and Individuals is happening. How will you prepare?