Health care will always be about treating people
Tech has a role but it’s not a cure-all, says Mike Callaghan.
Amazon and two partners recently announced a major, if mysterious, move into the American health-care market. In all likelihood, this endeavour will prove quite profitable, touched as it is by the profit-turning pixie dust of Silicon Valley, and fuelled by mountains of capital, talent and data.
And yet, if the goal is truly to improve public health, the tech giants have already missed the point.
For this non-profit venture, Amazon has joined forces with the bank JP Morgan, and with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. For now, their vague goal is to use innovative technology to reduce costs and improve patient care for their own employees — who, combined, number more than one million — and eventually for all Americans.
Anyone who knows the ambition and reach of these companies knows that before long, their fingerprints might be all over American — and even Canadian — health care.
It’s tempting to think that Amazon, or Google and Apple, who are also moving into this field, are about to revolutionize health just like they have media, communications or retail. But a few things should give us pause.
Most conditions that lead us to the doctor’s office are self-limiting. Left alone, the runny nose, the sort throat, the stiff knee — they eventually fix themselves. So why go to the doctor at all? We go because we want to be heard, want to have our suffering validated and taken seriously.
From MDs to naturopaths to witch doctors, the core of all medical encounters is a dialogue between the caregiver and patient. That isn’t about bigger data sets or better engineering: It’s about human relationships.
Even with mountains of data to deliver earlier diagnoses and more personalized care, there still are no cures for many of the conditions that plague us, and even then, we all have to go sometime.
Profit has generally proven to be a poor incentive when it comes to public health.
With an aging population, some of the most important conversations to be had are ethical and philosophical ones about quality of life, end-of-life care and what it means to die well. There is no app that makes these conversations easier, though, and no amount of venture capital that will provide easy answers.
And profit has generally proven to be a poor incentive when it comes to public health. At the bleeding edge of innovation, capitalist competition definitely spurs on innovation, but organ transplants and boutique drugs aren’t what make the biggest difference in the length or quality of our lives. As long as these companies focus their energies on sick people — rather than addressing the root-cause lifestyle issues that make us sick in the first place — they won’t meaningfully move the needle on public health.
Now, some will argue that the health-care system in the United States — and indeed here in Canada — is ripe for some disruption. I agree: A serious shakeup is long overdue. Why can I pay my income taxes online, but can’t send my family doctor an email? Why do I need to make two appointments, visit the lab, and see five different professionals just for a routine blood test? If the giants of Silicon Valley and Wall Street can streamline these processes, I’ll be the first to congratulate them for it.
The titans of technology and finance are welcome in health care, and ideally they’ll be able to make some progress at picking off the lowhanging fruit that maddens so many of us in our day-to-day encounters with the system.
But don’t let the techno-utopians convince you that Amazon, Google and others have arrived carrying the silver bullet; they haven’t. The answer is not data, engineering, or technology. Health care is still about people.