Planetree Conference 6 Part 1 of 3

Day 3 of conference proper consisted of a series of keynote address.

James Canton, Phd – Futurist, Title: Extreme Future of Healthcare

- Question: is it possible to transform healthcare to become cost effective and high quality care?

- Key trends – asymmetric risk

• Eg. Alzheimer will affect 1/3 men over 70 years old

- At least 50 companies at working on retrieving memories in the brain

- Yesterday Wall Street Journal reported that the State of Pennsylvania will publish all quality data for all hospitals in Penn State

- We are in the era of consumer genomics – what we can do, what insurance co can do, government can do with the data is still largely unexplored

- Hospital can becomes the arbiter of information (overload) – we (hospitals that is) are already trusted to cure/disease management, why not extend the continuum

- With all these data and information, can we move to Predictive Medicine, instead of Reactive Medicine?

- Population is aging, different buckets of demographics uses technology different [important as we think about how to employ technology for patient-centered healthcare]

o 25% Gen Y (> 1976), 10% Gen X (1965-1975), 40% Boomers (1946-1964), 25% Mature (<1946)

- Health 2.0 – everything digital about healthcare, that’s where everyone is focus on right now

- 7 Characteristics of Healthcare in the near future

• Patient centered, humanistic (personalization)
• Predictive
• Preventive
• Wellness vs Disease focus
• Self-care & Personal Responsibility
• High Tech, High Touch
• Social networking

- What medical model will we be using?  We have a rare opportunity to re-think the healthcare model.  Can we take advantage of it?

- Early detection made possible through genomics, data warehousing, epidemiological data, all sorts of wonderful invention in predictive power, are we doing enough to take advantage of it and advance healthcare?

- Diagnostic future – patient wants more information

- Wellness Centers – the younger the demographic, the more they want to know the extent of probability of something happen to them

- Regenerative medicine – next big thing!

- Medicine will be personalized

- New class of pharmaceuticals coming up, personalized, targeted

- Personal bio-detection – do you know what that is?

- Design evolution for drugs, surgical devices, diagnostic equipment

- Tiger Woods have Lasik twice to have better than 20/20 vision

- Telerobotics – not just DaVinci, have you heard of nano surgical robots?

- Conquering disease at the atomic scale – the next frontier

• If we know how disease works on the atomic level, don’t you think the intervention will be different too?
• More than 100 companies working on this now

- Synthetic biology – merging engineering and biology – grow new limbs, new kidney, new heart?

- Designer genes – already coming

- The future of healthcare, can be summarize in 3 Ps

• Predictive
• Prevention
• Health Promotion

- Hospital is already a social network for the community regarding health

• How do we empower the patients?
• how do we partner with them to prevent disease?
• we need to think health management vs disease management
• somehow we have to integrate all these together, does your hospital know how?

- Every industry is moving to Cloud Computing, because it’s always on, anywhere, anytime

- Technology is a good thing, it integrates, it is cost effective, the biggest resistors are doctors unfortunately

- We can now move information faster, have better access to data warehouse, leverage all the extra information to provide better care

- Cloud computing means collaboration

- Did you know that there are 100s of medical apps for iPhone currently available

- Nutra genomics - Individual groups response to medical intervention

• Greek study – Normal way to lose weight did not work for them. Genomics research discover potatoes help them lose weight, not what you expect. 
• Only Europe is doing all this pioneering work, not happening in USA
• Speaker sees prime opportunity in helping people manage their health in pre-diabetes stage

- Insurance companies are like dinosaurs, still want to manage disease, we need to manage health

- Can we give people a glimpse of their future, use lifestyle information we have today, we can do it, could we do more?  It can be a source of new revenue!

- We are already patient-centered care for Planetree hospitals, we are already halfway there

- Look up this term, “Intuitive Awareness”, [I have no idea], googled it!

- Electronic Health Records – who owns them?

• It appears that hospital just need to ask permission from them to store it for them.  Ownership will need to be defined better. [we need to think about this when we go EMR, do our patient agreement covers use of data in EMR database?]
• this is a great opportunity to use the data for greater quality of care
• raise awareness of these trends to doctors
• link/collaborate with those working on it
• hospital as “trusted advisors” help navigate patient through all this.  The emerging role of patients in their health management will be dramatically change

- We are still medieval.  Why is it none of us know when we are going to die? Why??!!  Will all this information available, we still leave it to chance

- Insurance can play a different role

• Eg. His brother has retinal detachment due to genetic predisposition, but he himself has the same thing 15 years ago.  So there is greater genetic predisposition, but nobody tell him.  Information is there, we need to link it and use it. 
• Eg. If you are predisposed to renal failure, why not work with patient to put away $10 a month, and get ready to pay for a new kidney 15 years from now.  Hello insurance companies?  Isn’t this a better way?

- 50% of lumps we will know the timing of when it will turn cancerous.  Knowledge is available, are you using it?

• Repeat one last time, we need a different model of healthcare

I know there’s a lot here.  Each of the keynote speakers were great.  Hospital cannot stand still.  Time to think differently.

Enjoy reading…