The Future of Health Care Innovation: The Leading Frontiers of Change

Co-Sponsors: The University of Colorado Hospital,
Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, and
The Eugene S. Farley Jr. Health Policy Center, and Polsinelli

The US healthcare experience may well be more complicated and intimidating than any other industry–often made inaccessible by providers and experts who do not seek to make it a pleasant experience for consumers. Health care innovation promises to address this failing, along with addressing the triple challenge of improving access to health care, raising the quality of health care outcomes, and lowering health care costs. The promise of making such changes is real, but the path to doing so will be challenging. At this second annual Health Care Innovation conference, we will discuss how technological changes and innovation can: (1) address health care accessibility through tele-health solutions; (2) enable better health care for individuals by using technology and making the health care system easier to use; and (3) raise the quality and effectiveness of health care through data analytics.

The health care system faces the formidable challenge of bringing access to under-served populations. In particular, many consumers do not benefit from regular health care, often because they are uninsured, under-insured, or are not close to health care providers. In terms of making health care more accessible, tele-health solutions–increasingly supported by policymakers and private payers– promise to offer services to a range of citizens who don’t live near major health care centers. The first panel will investigate the progress of and opportunities for such solutions, which are just starting to take root.

A second challenge facing our health care system is that consumers often do not understand or take ownership of their health care decisions. A number of technological changes, and new models of health care services, are starting to change that situation. For starters, consumers are now using apps like iTriage that provide guidance on how to address medical conditions, emerging bio-informatics breakthroughs, and technologies that measure health and well-being like the FitBit or other wearable sensors. Moreover, a number of providers are developing new models of delivering health care such as “concierge-type services” or accountable care organizations that are committed to delivering integrated care. In all events, these changes, which will be discussed in the second panel, promise to make it easier for consumers to understand and address their health care needs.

The IT revolution and the big data revolution is only slowly coming to health care. Even as accountable care organizations, personalized health care records, and applications like FitBit capture more data than ever about individual health care decisions, the concept of health care data analytics remains in its infancy and has yet to contribute to lowering the costs of health care and improving its quality. In the third panel, we will address this very question, evaluating the opportunities and challenges facing data analytics in health care.