For centuries, the central challenge in health care was ignorance. There simply wasn鈥檛 enough information to know what was making a person sick, or what to do to cure the patient.
Now, health care is being flooded with information. Advances in computing technology mean that gathering, storing and analyzing health information is relatively cheap, and it鈥檚 getting cheaper by the day. As computers continue to fall in price, the cost of sequencing a single person鈥檚 genome is tumbling, too.
贰苍迟谤别辫谤别苍别耻谤听听is working on wearable, real-time monitors to give doctors the ability to 鈥渋nterrogate鈥� a person鈥檚 individual blood cells 鈥渁ll the way down to the atom level鈥� to see how a given drug works or why it fails.
Collecting biochemical and genomic data on billions of people around the world is just the tip of the data iceberg that a few dozen health information technology experts described recently in New York at a听听sponsored by听Forbes听尘补驳补锄颈苍别.
鈥淵ou now have all of health care digitized, which is pretty cool,鈥� said Paul Black, president of the electronic health records company听.
But it鈥檚 still unclear how to make sense of all the digital information on a big-picture scale. 鈥淭here鈥檚 different approaches in the marketplace to how you would make this all be actually valuable to people,鈥� Black said.
Some doctors are finding it valuable to 鈥渟ee the community information, versus just the campus information,鈥� meaning: If they know where their patients are going for health care beyond their hospital or office, and whether they鈥檙e actually filling all the prescriptions they鈥檝e been given, doctors make different treatment decisions nearly 70 percent of the time, Black said.
Companies like听听are betting that they can come up with ways to analyze seemingly unrelated data about how and why people use health care to improve health and save corporations money.
颁补蝉迟濒颈驳丑迟鈥檚听听said, 鈥淲e can now actually marry information from [corporate human resources] systems 鈥� Are you a high performer in your company? What鈥檚 your absenteeism been? 鈥� with medical claims to really understand that, among our high performers we鈥檙e having a lot of absenteeism because their kids鈥� asthma is not well controlled.鈥�
There are concerns about privacy and data security. Blackberry CEO John Chen pitched his company鈥檚 mobile devices as secure enough to meet federal medical privacy laws. But the Forbes event was more focused on the potential benefits in the new Big Data world.
There鈥檚 a lot of optimism that having a more complete picture of peoples鈥� health and how they use the health care system will save insurance companies money, and drive health care premiums down. Kevin Nazemi, co-CEO of听, believes that a new generation of wearable wireless sensors will soon help doctors detect health problems early enough to prevent expensive treatments.
But, Nazemi said, it鈥檚 still hard for insurance companies to justify investing up front in data systems when 鈥渢he value is reaped in Year 4 or 5 in a market where [people switch insurance] on average every three years. You know, dollar in, 25 cents back. How do you think of that?鈥�
David Goldhill, who runs a cable TV network and is the听听Catastrophic Care, is skeptical that technological breakthroughs, even if they make people healthier, will ever tame health care spending.
鈥淲e didn鈥檛 go from 4 percent to 17 percent of GDP on health care spending because Americans got a lot less healthy,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he increase in spending in health care isn鈥檛 because, 鈥極h my God, we鈥檙e sick and if we can just cure ourselves, it鈥檚 going to go away,鈥� 鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a business model issue, it鈥檚 the way we subsidize and manage demand.鈥�
Some see a future when wirelessly enabled skin patches are cheap, common and accumulating personal health data on a massive scale, and all that data leads to better cures and detects health problems before they blossom into expensive diagnoses. Others, an era where every minute abnormality, dangerous or not, is identified and money is spent needlessly treating it.
Yale School of Medicine cardiologist and听听is optimistic about medicine鈥檚 ability to reel in meaningful insights in that vast sea of data. But, he says, it鈥檚 going to require a major shift in culture in clinics and hospitals. He says it鈥檚 still the norm for doctors to rely on their memories to determine whether a given drug is right for a particular patient, 鈥渁s if nobody鈥檚 walking with a computer on their holster.鈥�
This story is part of a partnership that includes , and Kaiser Health News.