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Futurists Ponder the Possibilities
March 1, 2008
Anniversaries are a good time to consider past accomplishments and future possibilities. To mark Health Data Management’s 15th anniversary, we asked five of the nation’s leading health care futurists for their reflections on the past 15 years and their predictions for where health care information technology is headed in the next decade and a half.
Leland Kaiser President Kaiser Consulting Brighton, Colo.
In the past 15 years, health care has made great strides in applying computers to a wider variety of tasks, Kaiser says. “We used to see computers as tools—instruments to help us do the job,” Kaiser says. “But computers are not just fancy typewriters or a way to keep track of data; they’re a way to manage knowledge.”
Today’s ubiquitous computerization and global connectivity via the Internet will lead to “decentralized communities of interest that advance the state of the art,” the futurist says.
For example, academic medical centers and their “centers of excellence” will lose power because small groups of experts from around the world will hold virtual meetings to tackle problems interactively.
“Artificial intelligence, which is coming very quickly, will have the ability to know everything that’s known and suggest hypotheses and possess reasoning capacity,” he adds. “So we will become more computer-dependent.”
Once the payers for health care, including the federal government, mandate that all caregivers collect data on all aspects of treatment, this “transparency” will make it easier to weed out incompetent providers, the futurist predicts. Computers will enable total accountability, which will make it far easier to control health care costs, he adds. “Doctors who fail to practice good medicine and document it will not get paid,” he states.
Kaiser points to several important emerging trends, including:
* Computers will read a person’s neural impulses to compensate for a disability, such as the loss of a limb. For example, a computer will read brain signals and give instructions to a prosthesis to move.
* Implants will transmit a patient’s vital signs to a satellite. When the implant sends information that indicates an emerging health problem, a monitoring computer will alert an emergency team to respond before the patient even knows there’s a problem brewing.
*Ultimately, computers will be able to take commands from human thoughts. “There’s a theory developing that there’s a particle between mind and matter, and if we learn how to use it, we can use thought as an input device.”
Joe Flower CEO Imagine What If Inc. Sausalito, Calif.
“Charles Dickens stepping into a hospital at the turn of the 21st century would not feel uncomfortable with the way we keep records,” says Flower, lamenting the fact that someone from the 19th century would find handwritten notes are still the norm. “What we know as the medical record was invented in the mid-19th century, and the movement to an electronic version is the first really significant change in all those 150 years.”
In addition to ongoing efforts to digitize records, the most significant developments in health care I.T. in the past 15 years have been the development of standards for data and the refinement of data monitoring, the futurist says. By mining the data in standard electronic records, health care organizations soon will be able to pinpoint treatments that actually work, he contends.
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