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• People are using A&E departments as convenient drop-in clinics for minor ailments because they cannot get GP appointments
• In January 2017 the British Red Cross said A&E was struggling with a "humanitarian crisis" to keep up with a rush of patients over  the winter
• UK’s Prime Minister suggests that all GP surgeries should open from 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week 
• Primary care in England is in crisis, fuelled by a large and increasing demand and a shrinking supply of GPs
• 75% of GPs across 540 general practices over the age of 55 are nearing retirement, and newly trained GPs are seeking employment abroad
• By 2020 there could be a shortfall of 10,000 GPs in England
• Curing the primary care crisis would relieve pressure on A&E departments
• A simple, cheap and easy-to-use online dashboard could help relieve the primary healthcare crisis

 

• Healthcare systems throughout the world are in constant crisis
• Attempts to introduce digital infrastructure to improve the quality of care, efficiency, and patient outcomes have failed
• Modern healthcare systems were built on the idea that doctors provide healthcare with meaning and power, but this is changing
• Advances in genetics and molecular science are rapidly eating away at doctors’ discretion and power
• People are loosing their free will and increasingly being driven by big data strategies
• An important new book suggests that a biotech-savvy elite will edit people's genomes and control health and healthcare with powerful algorithms, and that people will merge with computers
• Homo sapiens will evolve into Homo Deus

 

• Misdiagnosis means unnecessary suffering and the loss of life
• 15% of all medical cases are misdiagnosed
• 44% of some types of cancers are misdiagnosed
• Misdiagnosis results from the way doctors are trained

What are the most common misdiagnosis found through autopsy? By Sebastian Lucas
 

Medical misdiagnosis occurs when either a condition is undiagnosed, or where an incorrect diagnosis is made. An example of the former is when a patient with a health problem has visited their doctor over a period, and the doctor fails to diagnose the illness.  An example of the latter is when, say, a fracture is diagnosed as a sprain.

What is the next "big thing" in healthcare? By Devi Shetty
 

• How will machine learning, virtual reality, the Human Genome Project, and the Internet of things change healthcare?

• Will technology result in a healthier future full of empowered patients?
• Will big data strategies help physicians perform their jobs better?
• Will 3D printing be used to replace tissue and organs?
• Will VR allow scientists to experience physical and psychological challenges rather than observe them?

 
Living in Silicon Valley I have a front row seat to the in technology poised to reshape the future of humanity. Machine learning, Virtual Reality, the Human Genome Project and the Internet of things will undoubtedly impact our lives in general, but they can also have a major impact on the Healthcare industry in particular.

To visualize the future of healthcare, I took a look at what’s trending in Silicon Valley and applied them to the healthcare industry. If the possibilities seem farfetched today, remember the iPhone is less than a decade old and has spawned countless industries that have shaped our daily existence, and will continue to do so. Technology moves fast and these four trends can potentially disrupt all aspects healthcare.

Machine learning
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not new to the technology world, but with machine learning, AI has taken on an open-ended form rife with endless opportunities for technology in general and healthcare in particular.

Machine learning enables computers to identify patterns and observe behaviors based on empirical data, and use all that to ‘learn’. In other words, machine learning is a set of self-learning algorithms that can eventually become smarter than any human being on this planet.

In 2012, Vinod Khosla, an American businessman and a co-founder of Sun Microsytems, predicted that in time, “Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do”; sparking outrage and umbrage within the healthcare industry. Physicians overlooked what Khosla was really saying: that big data, properly harnessed and utilized, had the potential to help physicians perform their jobs better. Farfetched at the time, big data and machine learning have come far enough in just four years to provide levity to Khasla’s argument.

When given access to a trillion gigabytes of patient data collected from devices, electronic health records (EHRs), laboratories, and DNA sequencing - alongside surrounding factors such as weather, geo-location, and viral outbursts - computers learn quickly, and they learn everything. The depth of information provided at such a scale suggests patients will not need to consult with various specialities to figure out what’s ailing them in the future. Instead, consolidated data will create and provide a fully coordinated treatment plan.

If you are thinking this sounds crazy, consider the fact that IBM acquired Truven Health for $2.6 Billion in early 2016. Truven delivers information, analytic tools, research, and services to the healthcare industry, and gives IBM access to data of some 200 million patients to feed Watson, which is IBM’s machine learning product that is a powerful question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed by natural language.

I can only imagine what Watson will offer after digesting this massive data, but one thing is for sure: the result is nothing but good news for patients and their care plans.

The Internet of things
Gartner, a US IT research and advisory firm, estimates six billion devices will be “connected” by 2020; collecting data for consumption, analytics and a whole lot more.

Healthcare has historically been a sucker for devices, embracing hardware that captures data, provides diagnostics and even treats patients. Previously, these devices have been in use only at hospitals and other healthcare locations, but in the future this technology has the potential to become a part of every single home; marking a new era in care.

How can the NHS innovate? - Mike Farrar, former NHS Confederation CEO

In the future, doctor’s visits will begin before we even head out the door. Our vitals will be captured at home and sent to our doctor. In some cases, we may even receive treatment in the comfort of our home. Further, once treatment begins, a real-time feed of our vitals and conditions will be shared and analyzed automatically via set protocols, which will trigger alerts if our health declines and requires a change in treatment.
 
The Internet of things has implications elsewhere for the healthcare industry. Pharmaceutical research could bid farewell to clinical trials once they can access millions of patients’ data to accurately analyze behaviors and outcomes.

Challenges facing immunizations could also be solved using simple, digitized solutions. Currently, vaccinations are rendered ineffective by temperature changes during their transport; a simple tracking device with a thermometer could solve that problem. Similar challenges with manufacturing, delivery and tracking of vaccination can also be digitized to make the immunization programs successful globally.

Last but not least, I foresee nano devices embedded within the human body to monitor glucose, blood pressure, temperature, and more; to allow for swifter, more effective decisions to be made so treatments can begin as soon as needed, significantly increasing positive outcomes.

The Human Genome Project
One of the greatest breakthroughs in healthcare this last decade was decoding the human genome to understand the DNA sequencing. It took over 10 years and a staggering US$2.7bn to crack the code of one human being. Just a decade later, it takes US$1,500 and a couple of hours to run the genome for any person.

The more we learn about DNA and its sequencing, the more accurately we can treat patients for their illnesses. There will be no guesswork involved, instead, a complete technical report will show exactly what went wrong since last time, and what can be done to fix it.

The future is closer than we think. I suspect human genome machines will be deployed at healthcare locations in the near term. The appetite for this type of information will grow, and eventually, we may live in an age where small genome devices are installed under your sink or inside your toilet seat to analyze changes in your DNA sequencing several times a day.

Today, researchers in Europe are using 3D printers and DNA sequencing to create human body parts that can potentially replace limbs or ailing organs. Prototypes already exist. DNA sequencing will help people take more control over their bodies, allowing them to make better informed decisions about their lifestyle, illnesses and treatments. This means that doctors’ roles will change, potentially allowing for a complete shift in the healthcare paradigm.

Virtual reality in healthcare
Mark Zuckerberg, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Facebook, takes every opportunity he can to promote his latest US$2bn acquisition, Oculus VR, an American virtual reality company, whose product, Oculus Rift, is a virtual reality (VR) headset. I had the opportunity to try Oculus Rift, and was blown away. Market analysts say Zuckerberg was crazy to bet on this, but I know he has discovered a platform with the potential to be larger than Facebook.

Virtual reality transports you into another world by creating an artificial environment, deceiving your sense of sight and touch, so your mind believes you are part of that environment. At a recent Aging2.0 conference, I watched a man in his 30s struggle to walk while wearing an Oculus Rift headset. A moment after putting it on he experienced the physical shortcomings of someone in there 80s. These types of experiences open up a new world for researchers by providing them with the ability to directly experience physical and psychological challenges rather than rely on observations.

Doctors' resistance to change - Devi Shetty,  founder of Narayana Hrudayala, Bangalore, India

The environment created by VR is artificial and programmed, at least for now. But fast forward three to four years, and you will likely be in a real environment. Consider this: a doctor could be transported to a hospital in Kenya while sitting in the relative comfort of his clinic in San Francisco. VR would allow the user to move around and interact with people enabling participation in treatments, research or even surgery.

I suspect Zuckerberg will combine social networking and virtual reality, allowing people from any part of the world to meet up with one another, to visit places they have previously only dreamed of, and go on adventures their body would never allow in the real world.

In healthcare, innovators are already leveraging VR for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), autism, social cognition, meditation, and help with exposure therapy and surgical training. And this is just the beginning.
 
Takeaways
The day is fast approaching when I will be able to virtually go to hospital to meet with doctors and specialists, share my vitals through various devices and a video camera to gain assessment and treatment plans from the comfort of my own home.

Healthcare information and management systems (HIMSS) have never disappointed me in terms of their participation and size, and I am hopeful that innovations will continue to shock, whispering promises of a healthier future full of empowered patients.

Will Devi Shetty have a major influence on global healthcare?

• Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) is an innovative Indian healthcare provider
• In just 15 years NH has become one of India’s leading hospital groups
• Founded by Dr Devi Shetty, a heart surgeon, NH treats nearly 2m patients a year
• NH has built an international reputation for affordable quality healthcare
• A number of large institutional investors are betting that NH can grow
• Is NH’s model of affordable quality healthcare replicable outside of India?

PART 1

Dr. Devi Shetty, founder and chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH), an innovative Indian healthcare provider, wants to transform the way healthcare is delivered across the world. Can he do it?

This Commentary is in three parts. Part 1 is a general introduction to NH and its recent initial public offering. It describes some of NH’s internal challenges and suggests that it is reasonable to assume that these will be overcome given its position within a buoyant Indian healthcare market. Part 2 describes some key aspects of NH’s model for affordable quality healthcare. In particular, it shows how Shetty has embraced information technology and some aspects of scientific management to create mega hospitals in India that deliver sustained high volume affordable quality care. Part 3 discusses some of the challenges associated with replicating the NH model outside of India. It briefly describes Shetty’s initiative to create a medical city in the Cayman Islands to capture share from the North and South American healthcare markets. It discusses some of the barriers to replicating the model in the UK and other developed markets. And suggests that besides India; Africa, despite its complexities and challenges might offer NH growth opportunities. It also suggests that NH could play a leading role in training a new generation of healthcare professionals specifically attuned to the vast and escalating healthcare needs of developing economies, and this could be commercially valuable.

London-based financial institution CDC and a number of others think he can. In December 2015 the CDC Group, owned by the British government, with an investment portfolio valued at £2.8bn, backed NH’s initial public offering (IPO) with an investment of US$48m. The IPO valued NH at US$1bn. The issue was 8.6 times oversubscribed, with most of the demand coming from foreign institutional investors. Beside CDC, other anchor investors included the government of Singapore, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, BlackRock, and Prudential.
 
Dharmesh Mehta, managing director and CEO of Axis Capital, one of the bankers to the issue, said:  “We got one of the best anchor books, with several long-term investors supporting it. Investors are bullish about the Indian healthcare space, especially hospitals, and Narayana Hrudayalaya has a unique business model, and the backing of good quality management.”
 
In the video below Shetty argues that, “Healthcare of the future will not be an extension of the past.” Shetty has a good understanding about how technology is revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered, and changing its structure and organization to such an extent that the future of healthcare will be dramatically different from what it is today. Healthcare is moving beyond the hospital towards patient self-knowledge and empowerment. Home-healthcare services facilitate enhanced doctor-patient connectivity where it had not been previously possible.

        
         (click to play the video)
 

Narayana Hrudayalaya

Shetty, who has more than three decades of experience as a cardiac surgeon both in the UK and India, founded NH in 2001. Since then, it has become one of India’s leading healthcare service providers; with a network of 23 multi-specialty, primary and tertiary healthcare facilities, eight heart centers, and 25 primary care facilities, across 32 cities, towns and villages in India. Currently, NH has 5,600 operational beds, and an aspiration to increase this to 30,000 by 2020. NH employs some 12,500 people, including 818 doctors, 5,400 nurses, and about 1,660 visiting consultants.  

In fiscal year 2015, Narayana provided care to nearly two million patients, and undertook more than 51,456 cardiology procedures, 14,000 cardiac surgeries - which accounted for 10% of the national figure - and 184,443 dialysis procedures. Narayana posted revenues of US$219m for fiscal year 2015 and profit after tax of $2m. For the four fiscal years that ended March 31, 2015, the company’s revenues grew at a compounded annual rate of 30%.
 

Access to healthcare for millions of poor people

NH has one of the world’s largest telemedicine networks with 150 centers including 50 in Africa, where Shetty sees further expansion opportunities for NH. The service is free-of-charge, and enhances the connectivity between remote health facilities and consultants at Narayana. Shetty, a vocal advocate of affordable healthcare, helped design the Karnataka State government Yeshasvini scheme, which is one of the largest self-funded micro healthcare insurance programs in India. It covers about 2 million people who previously did not have access to healthcare. Participants pay US$1.40 per year, which provides them with free access to over 800 surgical procedures in 400 hospitals. In the past 10 years, 85,000 peasant farmers have used the insurance to have surgery.  
 

Challenges

NH faces some challenges. Its profit margins are low, and its revenues are mainly derived from three of its largest hospitals, which concentrate on cardiac care and cardiology. As of March 2015, the company’s recent acquisitions and expansion into the Cayman Islands, where it opened a 130 bed tertiary hospital, were making losses.
 
However, NH’s acquisitions and expansion are strategic, and their pay-off are expected to accrue over the next four years. Also, higher yields from value-added therapies such as oncology, neurology and gastroenterology are anticipated to improve Narayana’s average revenue per operating bed (ARPOB). The company’s strategy to focus on the mid-income segment of the market is predicted to increase its utilization, given that this is a large, rapidly growing, and immediately addressable market. Narayana is also advantaged by its history of efficient use of capital: it has a debt-equity ratio of only about 0.3.
 

Market drivers

Investors might have been influenced by the falling gold, oil and real estate markets, and the relative attraction of the Indian healthcare sector, buoyed by changing demographics, rising incomes and a large and expanding middle class, greater health awareness, changes in disease profiles, and a rising penetration of health insurance. By 2020 India is expected to be the world’s third largest middle class consumer market behind China and the US. By 2030 India is projected to surpass both countries with an aggregated consumer spend of some US$13 trillion. A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) suggests that if India continues to grow at her current pace, average household incomes will triple over the next two decades, making the country the world’s fifth-largest consumer economy by 2025, up from the current 12th position.
 
While recognizing the challenges for India’s healthcare sector, investors must have thought that NH is well positioned to take advantage of the expected explosion in India’s middle class consumer market. Narayana has a strong brand name, and it is one of India’s leading healthcare companies, with significant revenue growth over the past four years. Its services appear cheaper than those of its competitors, such as Chennai’s Apollo Hospitals Limited, which has about four times the revenues of NH, and Delhi’s Fortis Healthcare, which is about three times bigger in revenue terms. This suggests that NH has scope for substantial growth.

 

PART 2

International attention

Healthcare systems worldwide consume a large and escalating share of national incomes, and costs and quality of care are the two most hotly debated issues among healthcare professionals. Does Shetty have an answer?

For many years, Shetty has attracted international attention. For example, in 2010 a UK prime ministerial delegation visited NH’s Medical City in Bangalore. Vince Cable, then the UK’s Business Secretary, said: “What we're trying to do in the UK is to get more for less. Dr Shetty has shown us a model by which we do not need to accept inferior healthcare because there's less money, but actually how to get more out of the system for less resource,” Cable described his visit as “inspirational” and went on to say, "I just found it overwhelming. NH combines what we always see in a good health system, which is humane humanitarian behaviour, with sound economics."
 

The Henry Ford of heart surgery

Worldwide, the demand for healthcare services is rising faster than its supply. By focusing on an endeavor to make doctors more effective, NH has demonstrated that it can deliver what Cable wanted: enhanced patient outcomes for less money.  “We have invested in infrastructure. Similar infrastructure in the UK and the US is used for about eight to nine hours a day. Ours is used for 14 to 15 hours a day, which allows us to perform the high volume of procedures,” says Shetty. In 2009 the Wall Street Journal referred to him as “the Henry Ford of Heart Surgery”.
 
In a similar way Henry Ford used large factories and mass-production techniques to manufacture a large number of quality cars, which many ordinary people could afford; so Shetty developed large hospitals, and a significant skill base, which he used to improve the quality of surgical processes and reduce costs. This enabled him to offer large numbers of people access to affordable high quality healthcare. 
 
NH doctors, who are on fixed salaries, work in teams. Each team comprises a specialist, a number of junior doctors, trainees, nurses and paramedics. A bypass surgery typically takes about five hours. The actual grafting, which is the critical part, takes only an hour and is performed by an experienced specialist surgeon, while harvesting of the veins/arteries, opening and closing of the chest, suturing and other procedures are carried out by junior doctors. Nurses and paramedics handle the preparation and the aftercare of the patient. This Henry Ford-type process leaves the specialist free to perform more surgeries. As the volume of surgeries increase, outcomes improve and costs are reduced. A heart surgery at NH costs less that US$2,000 per operation.
 
NH’s lower costs have not come at the expense of quality. Narayana’s mortality rate for coronary artery bypass procedures is 1.27%, and its infection rate 1%, which are as good as that of US hospitals. Incidence of bedsores after cardiac surgery is anywhere between 8% and 40% globally, whereas at NH it has been almost zero in the last four years.
 

It can’t be done!

“When we started our journey we were discouraged by people saying that, there is no such thing as low-cost high quality healthcare, and that healthcare is expensive and will always be expensive. Only when people become wealthy they can afford quality healthcare . . . . . When I grew up, I looked at some of the richest countries in the world, struggling to offer healthcare to its citizens, and quickly realized that even if India became a rich country, it still would not be able to guarantee healthcare to everyone. We had to change the way we were doing things, and this is what we’ve done,” says Shetty.
 

Socializing the P&L

UK doctors and health providers often talk about reducing the costs of healthcare, but, says Shetty, doctors “usually have no idea how much they are spending”.  In contrast, at noon every day all NH doctors receive an SMS with NH’s previous day’s revenue, expenses and EBIDTA (earnings before interest, depreciation, taxation and amortization). According to Dr. Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, NH’s CEO, “When you look at financials at the end of the month, it’s a post-mortem. When you look at them daily, you can do something to change things”. The daily data doctors receive describes their operations, and the various levels of reimbursement. “It’s not just a cheap process, it’s effective,” says Raghuvanshi.
 
In the video below Shetty suggests that a key factor for the future success of NHS England will be its ability to re-invent itself, increase its focus on costs and outcomes, benchmark key functions with successful international comparators, and instil strict financial discipline in doctors, “because they represent the biggest spend in healthcare systems,” says Shetty.

      
      (click to play the video)
 

Information technology

Healthcare systems require radical change at every level in order to reduce the vast and upward trajectory of unsustainable costs, improve patient experiences and outcomes, speed the translation of research into therapies, and make healthcare accessible to everyone. Information technology helps in these regards. NH regularly mines data to raise the quality of care and patient outcomes. Its business intelligence activities manages real time data on 30 different parameters that track and support efficiency improvement. Those related to clinical outcomes are then reviewed at a weekly meeting, where all major clinical procedures are discussed among doctors and best practices shared. This way NH maps the cost effectiveness of each doctor.

 

PART 3

Affordable quality healthcare outside India

An example of Shetty’s model of affordable quality healthcare working effectively outside of India is Narayana Health Cayman Islands. The Cayman government has given Shetty a 200-acre site, and New York investors have backed him to develop and operate a Health City. In 2014 NH opened its first phase, a 130-bed tertiary hospital targeting the elective surgery markets of North and South America. “Narayana Health City Cayman will demonstrate how over-priced and inefficient US hospitals actually are, and show that lower costs and better outcomes can be achieved outside of India just as well as in Bangalore,” says Shetty.
 

The UK

There are numerous barriers to adopting the Shetty model in the UK and in other developed economies. NHS England has its innovators, and there are efforts to roll out innovations nationally, but they have limited success, mainly because innovations tend to be isolated and local, and not widely known across different NHS functions or beyond sector boundaries. The lack of centralised expertise in NHS England skews perspectives and limits resources. This presents a significant obstacle to the adoption of compelling healthcare innovations, such as those demonstrated by Narayana.

Further, there is doctor-resistance to innovations in the UK. Doctors are trained to identify and implement proven and recommended treatment protocols for various disease states. To deviate from this is to run the risk of prosecution. Further, health professionals in the UK are increasingly time-pressed, with the result that acquiring and adopting new and innovative pathways of care takes a back seat. See, Meeting the challenges of affordable quality healthcare. and, The end of doctors,
 

Medical tourism

"Medical tourism" refers to traveling to another country for medical care. The world population is aging and becoming more affluent at rates that surpass the availability of quality healthcare resources. In addition, out-of-pocket medical costs of critical and elective procedures continue to rise, while nations offering universal care, such as the UK, are faced with ever-increasing resource burdens. These drivers are forcing patients to pursue cross-border healthcare options either to save money or to avoid long waits for treatment.
 
It is estimated that the worldwide medical tourism market is between US$50bn and US$65bn, and growing at an annual rate of between 15%-25%. In 2015 some 1.5 million US residents travelled abroad for care, up from 0.5 million in 2007. Two of their top destinations were Costa Rica and India. The former can yield savings on standard surgical procedures of between 45% and 65%, and the latter, between 65% and 90%.
 
Beyond the US, the OECD estimates that there are up to 50 million medical tourists worldwide annually. The most common procedures that people undergo on medical tourism trips include heart surgery, dentistry and cosmetic procedures. People are attracted to well-known, internationally accredited hospitals, which have a flow of medical tourists, internationally trained experienced health professionals, a sustained reputation for clinical excellence, and a history of healthcare innovation and achievement.
 
Already, NH attracts medical tourists from over 50 countries, it has an international reputation for excellence, many of its top health professionals have been trained and have gained clinical experience in the US and Europe, and it has a significant track record in high demand areas, particularly heart surgery. This suggests that NH is well positioned to take advantage in the future growth of medical tourism, and this is probably something taken into account by NH’s anchor investors.
 

Africa

Because of entrenched obstacles to change in the healthcare systems of developed economies, Shetty has indicated an interest in Africa. In the past, private healthcare providers have neglected African healthcare; it has been underserved by governments, and mostly reliant on irregular help from abroad. However, this is about to change, and there is some evidence to suggest that healthcare reform in Africa is beginning. A 2016 African Healthcare Summit suggests that African healthcare spending is expected to grow to 6.4% of GDP in 2016, making it the second highest category of government investment. A Report from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank suggests that, over the next 10 years, there will be, “considerable African demand” for investment in hospitals, medicines and health professionals, and meeting this demand, “can deliver strong financial returns.”
 
Healthcare providers also can take heart that a number of African countries are trying to establish or widen social insurance programs to give medical cover to more of their citizens. Further, there are six African countries with projected compounded annual growth rates (CAGR) for 2014 through 2017 of between 7.12% and 9.7%. These are: Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia.
 
Notwithstanding, Africa is facing a dual challenge of communicable and parasitic diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS, and growing rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, cancer and respiratory diseases. Increased urbanisation in many African countries, along with growing incomes and changing lifestyles, have led to a rise in the rate of chronic conditions, which are projected to overtake communicable diseases as Africa’s principal health challenge by 2030. This suggests that despite the fledging signs of change, over the next decade African healthcare will remain challenging. However, over the past 15 years, NH’s has demonstrated capabilities to meet and overcome similar challenges in India, which positions it well to succeed in Africa where it already has a non-trivial telemedicine presence.
 

Training health professionals

The healthcare and wellness industry is positioned to be a driver of the world economy in the 21st century. Healthcare is about a US$6 trillion global market, which is increasing. Advances in medical technology, public health and governance have improved healthcare for about 30% of the world’s population. But billions of people still have no access to healthcare.

The WHO estimates that there is a shortage of nearly 13 million healthcare workers globally, but Shetty believes these shortages could be significantly higher. According to the Royal College of General Practitioners the shortage of doctors in the UK is the worst it has been for 40 years. One hundred primary care practices, serving 700,000 patients across Britain, are facing closure, and the number of GP-patient consultations is estimated to rise from 338 million in 2013 to 441 million by 2017. UK experts warn that primary care doctors with too many patients will fail to provide adequate healthcare through current delivery methods, and they say that this is expected to further drive patients to search online for health-related issues. See: Curing the Problems of General Practice.

Such shortages concern Shetty, who believes that the situation will only be improved with a radical change in the way healthcare is delivered. “This”, says Shetty, “will only be achieved with a change in the way health professionals are trained.” Future health professionals need to be trained for a world of e-patients. Digital classrooms will create new connections between students and health professionals and allow for access to the most current information and resources. Shetty advocates the development of a virtual global medical university, with features that include a cross-country curriculum and a reduced training period. “This is the only way we will increase the much needed pool of healthcare talent,” says Shetty.
 

Takeaways

While change in western healthcare systems will neither be quick nor easy, NH’s near to medium term growth will most probably come from India, the Caymans, Africa and other developing countries where the need for quality healthcare is high and growing fast, and the barriers to entry relative low. In time, however, the US and the UK might be able to benefit from some of Narayana’s best practices so that an increasing percentage Americans may have access to high quality affordable healthcare, and NHS England maybe reformed to ensure its survival.

Is patient engagement the new blockbuster drug? 

• Patient engagement improves outcomes
• The future is not a continuation of population based medicine
• Personalized medicine requires effective patient engagement
• Doctors are the main obstacle to enhanced patient engagement

If patient engagement were a drug, it would be front-page news, and malpractice for doctors not to use it. A significant and growing body of opinion believes that an effective way to scale care, and enhance outcomes is to develop patient engagement, but this requires a cultural and behavioral change on the part of doctors, which is not happening fast enough.
 

Low patient engagement means poor outcomes 

Each year payers spend billions on treating avoidable chronic lifetime diseases, yet the incidence of such diseases continue to escalate inflicting devastating personal, and social hardships on people and communities. Some wealthy regions of the world, such as the United Arab Emirates, where diabetes is spiraling out of control, have invested in “cathedrals” of diabetes healthcare staffed by experts, but still do not have the costly burden of diabetes under control. See, Diabetes threatens the future stability of the UAE
 

Tackling causes 

In other regions of the world, the treatment costs alone for avoidable chronic lifetime diseases are expected to bankrupt healthcare systems in the near future. The reason for this is simple. Despite eye watering investments in state-of-the-art treatment strategies, and despite some doctors’ initiatives to engage patients, no healthcare system yet has effectively engaged large proportions of patients living with lifetime chronic diseases, and successfully nudged them towards changing their diets and lifestyles, which are the root causes of a substantial proportion of such conditions. 

Dr Seth Rankin Managing Partner of a London based NHS primary care clinic, describes his efforts to engage patients living with diabetes in order to improve outcomes:

       
               (click on the image to play the video) 
 

Behavioral techniques 

Rankin’s endeavors to engage patients benefit from behavioral techniques, which explain how people behave, and encourages them to reduce unhelpful influences on their health, and change the way they think and act about important health related issues such as diets, lifestyles, screenings and medication management. See: Behavioral Science provides the key to reducing diabetes

“Our new pathway of care borrows from the behavioral sciences and engages patients living with diabetes. It’s based on very simple technology, which can provide huge reach at low cost. We are keen to extend our pathway to other NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups, and would welcome support from well capitalized diabetes agencies,” says Rankin.
 

Doctors’ support critical

Rankin insists that, “Only when patients are meaningfully engaged in their own health will they continuously learn how to improve care for themselves”. Effective patient engagement enhances the connectivity between doctors and patients, and is a sound foundation for behavioral change. However, for patient engagement to be scalable and effective, it has to be supported by appropriate IT, and patient-generated healthcare information. 
 

Doctors control patient engagement

Patients gather healthcare information from the Internet, and this encourages and supports self-management, and enhanced understanding of prevention and risk. However, the quality of online healthcare information is patchy, and patients have difficulty differentiating between legitimate and bogus information. This is resolved when doctors’ engage with patients to help them with the interpretation. Some doctors welcome this opportunity, while others object. This gives doctors the upper hand. Even if the situation is improved by enhancing patients’ access to premium and reliable medical information, doctors still decide whether such information is introduced into patient care pathways. 
 

Improved healthcare

Objections from doctors suggest that online health information results in longer and fraught doctor-patient relationships, which are a costly waste of time. But this is not necessarily so. Evidence, such as that published in 2008 in Telemedicine and eHealth, suggests the opposite: that patient-generated healthcare information, and effective patient engagement can lead to better understanding of specific conditions and treatment options, enhanced medication management, reduced complications, reduced face-time with doctors, and reduced visits to A&E. Specifically, the 2008 paper’s findings report that online healthcare information resulted in: (i) 19.74% reduction in hospital admissions, (ii) 25.31% reduction in bed days of care, and (iii) 20 to 57% reduction in the onset of complications.
 

Takeaways

Despite evidence to suggest that patient engagement enhances outcomes and reduces costs, it is not happening at a rate and quantum to render it effective. The main obstacle is the attitudes of doctors who fear an erosion of their status. Only a significant cultural and behavioral shift on the part of doctors will change this, and open the door to the many other professional disciplines, such as behavioral economists, software designers, community leaders, data scientists and risk managers, who are well positioned to help healthcare and medicine deliver better outcomes for patients. 

The future of healthcare is not a continuation of population-based medicine with its one-size-fits-all therapies mediated by general practitioners. The future of healthcare is personalized medicine, which recognizes that patients and medicines are complex and adaptive, which require smart and adaptive systems. This includes greater patient engagement.

The end of doctors 

• A second technology revolution threatens the future of healthcare
• Healthcare systems that ignore evolving technologies will collapse
• Most healthcare systems are trapped by three basic failures
• Doctors are the interpreters and not the processors of medical knowledge
• Will a computer decide to turn off a life support machine?
• Who owns the medical information on the Internet?

The role of doctors is about to change more than it has in the past two centuries, as the technology revolution enters a new era. 
 

Radical change 

This is the conclusion of Richard and Daniel Susskind in their book, The Future of Professions, published on 22^nd October 2015 by Oxford University Press. They argue that, over the next 20 years, “the second future”, dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet, will drive radical changes in healthcare systems, which will involve the transformation of how medical knowledge is made available.

Today, computer systems can delve into vast amounts of patient data, identify trends and make more accurate predictions than doctors. Machines such as IBM’s Watson, which can attain high levels of intelligent behavior is already being used in medicine. In parallel, the Internet provides people with new and effective ways to build communities and share healthcare information. 
 

Never too big to collapse 

Some doctors argue that their activity will never change because it depends on deep expertise, creativity and strong interpersonal skills; none of which can be replaced by computer systems. Earlier, managers of global companies that dominated world markets made similar claims before there enterprises grew obsolete and collapsed.

Twenty years ago, the failure of global companies to meet transformational challenges resulted in 74% of them leaving the Fortune 500 as new technologies and innovations opened the way for agile start-ups and entrepreneurs. The list is long, but here are a few examples. Digital Equipment and Wang Laboratories, once leading computer firms, disappeared completely. Even resurgent giants such as Apple and IBM stared into the abyss of irrelevance, and made painful changes before clawing their way back to the top.
 

In the 1980s the advent of digital photography, software, file sharing, and third-party apps ended Eastman Kodak’s world market domination, during which time Kodak made breakthrough technologies, which included the Brownie camera in 1900, Kodachrome colour film, the handheld movie camera, and the easy-load Instamatic camera. Motorola, another global giant, that developed and built the world's first mobile phone, and dominated that market until 2003, failed to focus on smartphones that could handle email and other data; and as a consequence, rapidly lost share to newcomers such as Apple, LG, and Samsung.

 

Dr Devi Shetty, world-renowned heart surgeon, founder, philanthropist, and chairman of Narayana Health, India’s largest hospital group is viewed as the person who will have the biggest influence on 21^st healthcare. Here he describes how information technology is set to radically change healthcare:

    
        (click on the image to play the video) 
 

Healthcare systems not immune

The Susskind’s agree with Shetty, and believe that healthcare systems, predicated upon antiquated patient-doctor technologies, face a similar demise to that of large companies that failed to adapt and change. The more successful healthcare systems will be those, that copy large companies who survived by collaborating with smaller, agile firms either as suppliers or partners. Rigid bureaucratic healthcare systems that find it more difficult to innovate will fail.
 

Three reasons for failure 

Failure to address three major challenges accounts for the failure of most healthcare systems. The first is the continued investments in failing antiquated systems, and the consequent failure to pursue fresher, more relevant ones. The second is psychological: healthcare systems and doctors fixate on what made them successful in the past, and fail to notice when something new is replacing it. The third challenge is strategic: healthcare systems that only focus on today, and fail to anticipate the future will fail.

Previous HealthPad Commentaries have illustrated these three failures by the billions spent on failing diabetes education programs over the past decade, while the incidence of the condition escalated. This is because diabetes education and awareness programs fixate on antiquated systems, and fail to embrace, smarter and more effective ones. See: Behavioral Science provides the key to reducing diabetes
 

The concentration of medical expertise

A doctor’s raison d'être is to provide solutions to problems that people do not have sufficient specialist knowledge themselves to solve. Previously doctors were the ‘processors’ of medical knowledge, but with medical information becoming ubiquitous, increasingly doctors are becoming the ‘interpreters’ of medical knowledge. Doctors are gateways to specialist medical information.

In most healthcare systems, doctors are a huge and increasing expense, a large proportion of them use antiquated methods, and the expertise of the best doctors is only enjoyed by a few. This is changing by technological innovators finding ways to make medical expertise more widely available. Also, technology is enabling clinical expertise to be broken down into smaller tasks, which can be better achieved with a machine; telemedicine is just one example.
 

Who owns medical knowledge?

Online healthcare information empowers patients and threatens doctors by providing people with medical knowledge that previously resided in the minds of doctors. Such knowledge, which can help to diagnose illnesses, is free, increasingly common, and controlled by users. An important unresolved question is, who owns this medical knowledge?
  

Takeaways

Doctors exist to provide solutions to medical problems. If technology provides better more reliable solutions, the need for doctors dissolves. However, the most convincing objection for the displacement of doctors is an ethical one. Is it morally wrong to leave the decision to turn off a life support machine to another machine?

The debate is just beginning.