Healthcare’s Wile E. Coyote Moment
Healthcare has stepped into a strange space.
It is suspended in mid-air, floating temporarily on the sheer momentum of infinite technical potential, but knowing full well that we’re about to fall into a deep canyon below. In the past couple of hours comes a content surge into my inbox of unbridled enthusiasm from all corners, a tidal wave of boring excitement that artificial intelligence….
Can accurately detect heart valve disease and predict cardiovascular risk (link)
Can predict the risk of chronic kidney disease progression at all stages of the disease (link)
Can detect eye disease and risk of Parkinson’s decades in advance (link)
Can detect breast cancer decades in advance (link)
Can predict the need for Crohn’s Disease therapy (link)
Can spot those at highest risk for pancreatic cancer up to three years before diagnosis (link)
All of this pretend universality and pureed variety of progress seems to know no bounds.
Where things get weird:
At the same time we’re dwelling in the new synaptic pathways of the universe, the wonder and the glory of revolution-by-technology, the biggest technology services (Cognizant, Infosys and HCL) and creative services (WPP and Interpublic Group) companies are revising forecasts in their markets because of weakness in tech spending. “America’s broken pharmacy system” is in open revolt over burnout and errors (per reporting by USA Today). The National Health Service in the United Kingdom is 'flashing red' on almost all performance measures, according to the British Medical Association. And a European proposal on overhauling regulations in the drug market will only “accelerate pharma innovation decline” says the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
And in the most technologically sophisticated healthcare market in the world?
The United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country but still has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.
“Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system is not working as well as it could be,” the report’s lead author, Munira Gunja, senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said in a news release. “To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population.”
Where tech entrepreneurs, and the press outlets that adore them, go to sell and cover the next new possibility is a big question. As Silicon Valley works to design the world in its image, reconfiguring our ideals in order to fit their business models, it’s easy to bask in the eternal sunshine of it all, to simply sit back and let the warm glow consume every corner of our consciousness.
But technology is never decisive.
If anything, it is strategically distracting. It can be expensive confusing new technology for a modern strategy. At worst, tech-led visions are the short road to parity. And it can be lethal buying the sell that technical potential is the path to progress. Just ask Ukraine’s commander-in-chief on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia:
Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
Technology "can" do anything, which is part of the problem. All of it "works", sort of.
The “disruption” implied in what technology “can” do plays to our impatience with structures and situations that seem to coast on habit and inertia. But the ‘technological effect’ is more of a gesture that always seems radical but never really upsets the apple cart. In truth, it simply rearranges whatever already exists.
Explore More of Our Thinking
The old blueprint rules because we're trained to think as pieces and parts.
As long as we regard technology innovation as separate from economic innovation, understand healthcare and life sciences as distinct industries, treat public health independently from economic health, or believe government is an entity apart from 'the market' it regulates, then we shouldn't be surprised when we fail to see, sell or sustain exciting new visions. Our missions lead us back to where we started from. We're stuck in a loop of unfixable "crisis" because we don't have roadmaps guided by novel objectives.
Our ideas of economic competition are centered on consuming inputs, not producing outcomes.
“We can no longer cut off a tiny piece of the world, put it in a box, and give it to a robot,” writes Anca Dragan, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, in an essay for Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. “Helping people is starting to mean working in the real world, where you have to actually interact with them. If we want highly capable AIs to be compatible with people, we can’t create them in isolation from people and then try to make them compatible afterward.”
We have problems of coordination and value alignment. If we're serious about innovation for large scale impact — of the “deep and beautiful breakthrough” — then we have to invent with different conceptual leverage. Starting with this simple rule to writing a new strategy story:
Technology is a means, not an end.
/ jgs
John G. Singer is Executive Director of Blue Spoon Consulting, the global leader in positioning strategy at a system level. Blue Spoon specializes in constructing new industry ecosystems.