Top 10 Developments That Give Me Hope About Future of Health Care

Tomorrow I will be giving a keynote address for the American Institute of CPAs conference in Las Vegas (http://ow.ly/37mD9). At first they wanted an overview of federal health care reform and what the future holds for US hospitals and doctors. Latter, they called back and said we want a more hopeful message about the future of American medicine and health care. Do you have any hope?

So I got to thinking about what makes me hopeful about our industry's future? I came up with 10 developments I am very excited about.

1. Shared Decision Making and Slow Medicine

2. Computer Simulation (Think David Eddy's Archimedes)

3. Video games for professional instruction, lifestyle changes, drug adherence

4. Patient social networking sites (Think PatientsLikeMe and DiabetesMine)

5. Smart phones and health care apps including EMRs

6. Patient generated research (Think CureTogether)

7. Reverse innovation (Think GE)

8. PHRs

9. Doctors being replaced by online information from a patient like me for health information

10. Twitter and Facebook.

The AICPA folks would only give me an hour for the keynote so I am going to talk mostly about numbers 1 and 2, but all of these developments give me hope for the future.