Innovation And Progress: The Medical Mindshift

Innovation And Progress: The Medical Mindshift

Numbers have a way of slipping past us, their true weight often lost in abstraction. Let’s look at some of the numbers in American healthcare that go unnoticed  every day:

$4.1 trillion. This is the amount the U.S. spends on healthcare annually, representing 18% of GDP. If this were a country, it would be the 4th largest economy in the world.

$500 billion. This represents our annual expenditure on brand-name and specialty prescription drugs.

$900 billion. That’s the combined annual revenue of the top 10 health insurance companies in the U.S.

$1.1 trillion. This is the amount the U.S. spends on healthcare administrative costs. This represents nearly 8% of the US GDP. Most other countries spend about 1-2% of their GDP on healthcare.

Why do we spend so much? With this high dollar spend, why are we not healthier?

These numbers beg the question: Can the new power tool of Artificial Intelligence help reimagine American healthcare?

Let’s look at one example: Let’s mull over the $500 billion spent annually on prescription drugs. Could AI curb these costs? Imagine AI-powered algorithms identifying inefficiencies in drug development, streamlining clinical trials, and forecasting medication success rates. AI could expedite the drug discovery process and enhance its efficacy, potentially reducing research and development expenses and paving the way for more affordable treatments.

Now, reimagine a portion of that $500 billion allocated differently: towards preventative health, and better nutrition by providing wholesome lunches to every school child in America, from kindergarten to 12th grade. Instead of the standard US government allocated $3.50 lunch, let’s serve organically grown, pesticide-free, and minimally processed meals at $20 each. With 51 million students and an average of 180 school days per year, this reallocation could ensure nutritious lunches for about 2.72 years. This initiative would foster better health outcomes, encourage healthy eating habits, improve nutritional education, and combat childhood obesity and diabetes.

American healthcare is an incredibly expensive and inefficient endeavor. The possibilities of AI in Medicine are immense, but are we truly ready to embrace these changes? What barriers stand in our way, and what unforeseen consequences might arise from implementing this technology? Can we reimagine our spending, directing cost savings towards preventative programs that enhance a pre-emptive vs reactive health model? Can we become more efficient in our spending practices, achieving better outcomes at lower costs creating higher value?

In my upcoming book, “The Paradox of Progress,” I explore how new tools, although not always perfect, allow us to reimagine problems and solutions in different ways. New innovations often serve as transitions to the next evolution of progress, always  balancing the roses and thorns of technology to create a better future.

Are we ready to embrace the paradox?

Mike Karch