Thirty years ago, even the most prescient health care leader could not have foreseen the current health care environment. Today’s landscape—dominated by the paradigm of managed care, driven by the rapid computerization of health care information, and populated by integrated delivery systems and other variants—bears little resemblance to the practice of medicine circa 1969. Most experts believe we can expect the pace of change to accelerate as we move into the next century, and that innovation in every aspect of patient care will be nothing less than astonishing. Technology and the Future of Health Care brings together a remarkable group of health care visionaries who have identified and begun to analyze which trends and technological advances will likely shape and inform the next generation of medicine. From fundamental advances in computing and administration, research, nursing, and patient care delivery to noninvasive surgery, biomolecular therapies, bionics, and beyond, this ground-breaking book offers professional, executive-level insight into topics that until 

recently existed only in the realm of science fiction. With the help of Technology and the Future of Health Care, every health care leader can begin to plan and strategize how to guide his or her organization through the challenges and wonders the future will hold.

 Technology 
and the Future 
of Health Care: 
Preparing for 
the Next 30 Years

David Ellis

with contributions from

Margaret L. Campbell, RN
Donald K. Crandall, MD, FACS
Brian E. Peters, MHSA
Craig Ruff
Kevin L. Seitz
Marianne Udow
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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    Author's Comments:

    Dear Reader,

    In the recent spate of New Year millennial TV retrospectives, and drawing heavily on the startling gains in the U.S. stock markets in 1999, all the economic pundits seemed (for once) to agree: We are in the midst of an economic revolution. And “Economic revolutions,” wrote economics writer Diane Coyle, “bring incredible dislocations. Industries vanish and new ones emerge. People are more likely to have to do different work, work in different ways or places. The skills they need for their own prosperity will change.”

    Technology and the Future of Health Care is about the likelihood that many people employed in any of the many branches of the health care industry, from actuaries to x ray technicians, will find themselves having to look for alternative work well within the next 30 years. Why? Because their jobs will be taken by machines that grow increasingly and exponentially smarter, smaller, more mobile and dexterous, more aware, more communicative, more interconnected, more autonomous and more complex. 

    This is by no means a new message, but it is a message that continues to be denied, downplayed, or ignored. And if it is true, then denying or ignoring it will hurt us. In writing this book I simply wanted to present further evidence, drawing partly on my own skill as a technology trends spotter, and on my co-authors' health care professional insight and expertise, to show that the message is true, and to suggest how to deal with the serious implications and issues that leap out at one as soon as one accepts it. 

    Though it says a lot about today's health care technologies, and has plenty of examples of technologies already taking over, this book is at heart a policy-oriented book about the long term. That is its focus, and therein lies its unique value relative to most healthcare technology books. It is a book for leaders concerned about survival in the longer term. 

    Leaders are keenly interested in what other leaders think, which is one reason the book includes contributions from some nationally-recognized leaders in healthcare. Given the demands on their time, their readiness to contribute to writing the book is the clearest possible evidence of their readiness to read such a book.

    I hope you will read it, too; and—if you accept its message—that you will help figure out a way to cope with the tsunami of change barreling down upon us all.

    Thank you.

    David

     
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