#TexasHIMSS: “Godfather of PCMH” & the Future of Medicine

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I am at Texas HIMSS this week in Dallas, Texas. The opening keynote was provided by IBM’s Paul Grundy who has also become known as the “Godfather of the Patient Centered Medical Home”. He provided a good overview of the history of efforts surrounding connecting data to care. Towards the end of his chat he defined how healthcare will transform in the near future. Here are his thoughts, and I would love to hear yours:

1. Healthcare will become more data driven: This is clearly at the heart of what Paul Grundy, and the patient centered medical home movement, is passionate about. The driving question here is “Where is the data and how does it impact care at the elemental level?” with the goal of having all data available and able to act upon.
2. Every person will have a plan: This is an interesting one for me. My mind immediately harkened back to the Connected Health Symposium a couple of years back when Joseph Kvedar, MD spoke of using genetic data for personalized preventive medicine. You can read my post about it here. There is also a post by Dr. Marie Stoshak-Chavez on whether we will ever see personalized preventative medicine in the future.
3. The delivery system will be team based: Check out this piece on the core principles and values of team based care. They correctly point out that care has not always been a team sport. In the “good old days” meaning “still happening today sometimes” all care was curated by the doctor as the “all knowing sage”. The complexity of modern healthcare provides us with a situation where the entire team needs to work together harmoniously to provide care quality. This brings us to….
4. Managing a population down to the person: Here is what I hope is the “patient centered” part of PCMH. It my (not so) humble opinion, the healthcare of the future will not reach its fullest potential until it is truly patient centered. This means that the patient needs a seat in team based care.

What are your thoughts? Do you think he nailed it, or are there some holes in his vision of where medicine will evolve into the future?