In my last blog, I talked about technology being disruptive for the healthcare industry. Since then, I found another article that takes it a bit further.
Valve, an online gaming company, has pushed disruption in the software industry to new levels. They are disruptive. Valve helped change the gaming industry from distributing boxed items to digital downloadable format. This dropped the price of every game by removing most of the logistics costs. It accelerated time to market, and provides nearly immediate updates. I explained in my last blog how Healthcare too grows through disruption. .
Valve has passion. Passion is quickly getting sucked out of the healthcare by increasing costs, lawyers, regulations, and restrictions. In spite of this, most physicians still love what they do. They would keep going if someone can help them find a little respite from the bureaucracy. Healthcare Software vendors need to tap into this passion to help grow and innovate the industry.
Valve knows their customers. This is a big problem in healthcare. Patients should be the customers but most of the time they have very little say in how the physician gets paid. The real customers are the payors, and they have to constantly change their business to meet the ever changing demands of this industry. Moving toward a more patient-centric model will take time, effort, and some breakthroughs in technology to get us there. We are already seeing tools evolve that enable immediate interactions with patients, specialists, and the care teams. More of this will be good for the healthcare industry.
Valve encourages community. This is the epitome of healthcare innovation. Everyone learns from everyone else and the industry progresses faster when more get involved. One challenge today is information overload. Anyone with a computer can find more information related to disease, treatment, and payment in 30 seconds than was known 50 years ago. Unfortunately, not all this information is accurate and too much of this is misleading.
Valve is sustainable. This could be a problem in healthcare. More regulations, lower payments, and the diminishing passion are all conspiring to hurt the healthcare industry. Unlike gaming, healthcare has much smaller room for error. Yet, the Healthcare industry could learn from the gaming model. With some minor changes in payments and procedures, it is realistic to offer better follow-up, better care management, and overall savings. It simply starts by thinking outside the box.
In the end, it will be passion that determines the outcome. Passion will continue to drive innovation and help providers embrace new technologies. Lack of passion will push some out of the business. More passion will bring others in.
Are you so passionate about healthcare that you are willing to disrupt the present model? What will it take?
