How The Tech Industry Can Be The Change It Wants To See In Healthcare

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How The Tech Industry Can Be The Change It Wants To See In Healthcare

Brad Porter, Global Chief Executive, Orion Health.

Think about the healthcare system you interact with. Do you know if the technology is efficient? Do the clinicians you see have the tools to collaborate effectively, so you don’t have to share the same pieces of information with different people over again? And does the system provide equitable health outcomes for all the communities it serves?

The answer to those questions is probably going to be no.

Time recently highlighted that almost 49% of the world’s population will take part in elections this year. Invariably, health policy ranks as a top-five issue concerning governments around the world. In most democracies, voters want improvements to healthcare, but rarely does it seem to get tackled. Why is that?

We all talk about having an effective health system—but in many cases, it seems to remain a distant, almost unachievable goal.

Problems and solutions are widely understood.

Health systems have the data and know where the problems are. You could ask almost any front-line clinician, and they will be able to tell you the critical health issues in their area. Bluntly, we know if you live in poverty or are from a marginalized group, you will likely be another negative health statistic.

We have the solutions and the tech to reroute healthcare’s journey, but securing commitment and funding to act on it is the hard part.

The health industry is drowning in data and the volume is growing exponentially. After all, health deals in facts and statistics—the perfect candidates for orderly systemization and technology connectivity.

Yet regulation, ownership and lack of system interoperability are keeping separate data points in unhelpful silos. And we all understand that healthcare workers, patients and populations at large could benefit from knitting this together into a bigger picture that helps us make more informed and efficient decisions for better, more equitable health outcomes.

Is it that we don’t have enough courage and political will to tackle these problems? Or is it that decision-makers aren’t armed with the right facts about the outcomes these solutions could provide, despite the sector drowning in data?

In the U.S., according to The Washington Post, life expectancy peaked nearly 10 years ago at age 78.9. While for valid reasons Covid-19, gun violence and opioids garnered public and political attention, The Post found chronic diseases such as diabetes and liver disease were the greatest threat to those aged 35 to 64.

In 2020, according to The Washington Post, those in the poorest communities were 61% more likely to die prematurely than those in the richest. The situation is astonishing, and it won’t fix itself if we keep doing what has always been done.

How do we break the cycle?

Critical system thinking and structural decision-making are needed to provide better health outcomes, and nothing will get done without strong leadership and political courage, but you need the data first. Policymakers need to have big, philosophical-level discussions about how we resource healthcare, and they need to be armed with the right evidence to introduce the changes needed.

The social determinants of health have far-reaching implications for whole population health outcomes. Decisions made by policymakers can either promote health equity, leading to improved health outcomes for all, or alternatively, exacerbate health disparities, widening the gap between different socioeconomic groups and increasing the rate of poor health outcomes.

Look at what’s possible when we galvanize action around united goals—à la Covid-19 pandemic. Historically, vaccines have taken decades to develop, but multiple Covid-19 vaccines were developed with never-before-seen lightning speed.

The public was wary because we’d never seen a vaccine developed this quickly, but the Covid-19 vaccine showed it’s not the technology or the science that is slow to progress; it’s the bureaucracy that slows development down. Covid-19 taught us that bureaucracy can be overcome, and money can be found with a specific goal in mind.

How can the tech industry build momentum for change in the health sector?

When you look around at how we talk in the health tech industry, it’s fair to say that we speak with a lot of jargon: Interoperability, data lakes, open standards, the list goes on. And it means nothing to policymakers, to workers on the front line and to patients simply trying to understand their own health.

The proof is in the data that we love so much. But we need to tell these stories in different ways.

Take New Zealand’s healthy homes standard, for example. Kiwi homes are notoriously damp and under-insulated, which disproportionately affects those in lower socioeconomic groups and renters. In the three years since the Healthy Homes policy was implemented, hospitalizations decreased by 19.8%.

This is a clear statistic linking policy change with health outcomes, and it’s underpinned by technology connecting data points to demonstrate impact. The more we can translate the data we do have into stories of impact, the more we’re likely to get buy-in to snowball this effect, building out a greater picture of the myriad determinants impacting population health and equitable health outcomes.

I’m optimistic the tech industry can be part of the change we want to see, but we must speak the right language for our politicians to drive it forward. Are you with me?


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