One of the more sobering facts about our healthcare system is not only its sheer size, but how the spending spreads across various age groups. The U.S. spends over $3.0 trillion, or 17% of its GDP, on healthcare. That compares with about 11% for Germany and France. But if we look at spending across various age groups, the U.S. spend is about the same percentage of GDP for people under 60-65.
In the dynamic world of healthcare, the sheer magnitude of innovations and the capital behind actualizing the vision of our entrepreneurs is enough to keep us fully occupied. We continue to see significant activity in the areas of value based reimbursement, consumerism, mobility and informatics. These technologies aim for the double play of increasing quality while reducing costs. At the same time, we see a Black Swan lurking in the background which is not getting the attention it deserves. Clinical Quality Language (CQL) will spur the creation of a whole new set of players and may propel our industry to a new level of automation and efficiency.
A few weeks ago, like many of our colleagues in our industry, we put on our comfortable shoes and trotted along the long aisles of the exhibit halls at HIMSS in Las Vegas. We visited many booths, and talked to multiple vendors, regulators and clients. Here are a few of our key takeaways.
This week, we published our latest market update on the Healthcare Information Technology (“HIT”) sector. You can read it here. We observe that the answer to the question: Why do Innovations matter? – is that the best ones advance humanity and enhance the quality of our lives. Further, we observe that innovations essentially fall into one of two categories – we like to call them ‘disruptive’ vs. ‘breakthrough’ innovations. Disruptive innovations use new methods or technologies to disrupt an existing process or product. Email, wireless telephony and robotic manufacturing are good examples of disruptive innovations. These innovations wring out inefficiencies…
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