Can Soc Media and digital medicine decrease the economic burden of health care?
The arrival of digital medicine promises to shake the medical establishment to its roots, not least because it will hand so much more information over to patients themselves. But the biggest savings will not come through exotic pills or “patient empowerment”, but from the application of basic economics. Realign the incentives in health care so that innovation focuses on making patients better and health care cheaper
We can't escape the fact that the cost of healthcare represents a significant portion of our GDP. Most "new" technology will only add to that burden. As the author discusses, most *technological* leaps involve a minor tweak to an older, cheaper platform ---and then patients as well as physicians are convinced that the newer version is necessary for various (and often misleading) reasons.
True technological advancement, that incorporates a "smart grid" platform, on a large integrated and transparent network could potentially lead to true advances in care and cost containment. Now we just how to figure out how to align the incentives appropriately and figure out how to reimburse the various players accordingly... shouldn't be too hard :-)
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