From David Shaywitz, a writer attending the FutureMed/Singularity University conference near Google’s HQ in California, a further dissection of the disconnect between healthcare technology (not all IT) and the everyday practice of healthcare. (Ed. Donna would also add the everyday lives of the individuals the tech is ostensibly helping.) The writer’s points are:
- At these conferences, attendees bathe in the notions that “technology is wicked cool and will deliver us all” and that even “informal discussion at the event seemed to revolve around Big Questions, lofty ideas, and the Next Big Thing.”
- The reality down the street is “there’s a huge gap between the way many technologists envision medical problems and the way problems are actually experienced by physicians and patients” and we need to bridge it
- The good thing is that good people are in the field and “seek to deliver improvements in health (even if the aim remains a bit off)”
Hat tip to George Margelis, GM Australia of Care Innovations. If you are a member of the Connected Health Community group on LinkedIn, check out his discussion thread there as well. Medicine’s Tech Future — the View from the Valley