Through the Healthtech Looking Glass
Have we lost focus on the 'health' in healthtech?
What's the difference between healthcare and healthtech?
The distinction is getting smaller year on year. At some point in the not-too-distant future, all healthcare businesses will be healthtech businesses, and all healthtech businesses will be healthcare businesses.
That's an exciting time to be alive during this transformation as a patient, clinician or industry worker.
What’s the purpose of healthcare?
Let us go back to the basics here. Diseases, whether physical or psychological (or a combination of both), develop and either progress to the point of requiring intervention from a doctor, or they resolve spontaneously at some point on their own.
It’s a healthcare provider’s responsibility, whether a business or a clinician, to deal with diseases at the point that a patient wants some help with them. Different people seek help at different points through this disease process. Some people seek input from a healthcare professional very soon after their symptoms become noticeable, and some people begrudgingly see a clinician when they’ve exhausted all other available options or the disease is preventing them from being able to function.
On this point, I’ve had patients limp into the emergency room with a partially amputated toe from a lawn mower accident, and they only came in for help because it hadn’t stopped bleeding for three days. Conversely, I’ve had patients attending my clinics with symptoms that have resolved in the three days between the time they booked the appointment and when they see me.
Doctors are hard-working, dedicated, and knowledgeable professionals who know the typical signs, symptoms, diagnosis, progression and treatment of diseases that affect other humans. Diseases are the same worldwide and broadly affect people in the same physiological way.
All humans deserve the same right to healthcare, but the availability of doctors is variable depending on where you happen to be born and your financial situation. There’s also the alarming fact that there is still a significant shortage of doctors in many parts of the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Additionally, there is an uneven distribution of doctors, with rural and underserved areas facing significant healthcare provider shortages compared to urbanised centres.
What’s the purpose of healthtech?
In my opinion health technology exists to improve the interaction between patients/people and their doctor. It’s that simple.
We’ve already seen the bombastic and short-lived hype surrounding AI replacing clinicians. I worked in bablyon then and always knew this was fanciful.
On this note, Jensen Huag CEO of Nvidia has recently said that people shouldn’t bother learning to code as AI will replace them. I also very much doubt this to be true shortly. Have you tried asking chatgpt to write a simple SQL query?
When does Tech overshadow Care?
All the time. Everything I read about healthtech focuses on the technological aspects of the delivery of healthtech, whether that’s the API used, the tech stack in place, or the LLM being queried. Don’t get me wrong, those are important, but they’re just tools to enable more efficient interactions between a patient and their clinician.
The Art of Medicine
Somebody once said that medicine is ‘the most scientific of the arts and the most artistic of the sciences’. I believe this to be true.
To be a good doctor, you must balance the available evidence base of disease diagnosis and treatment with the biopsychosocial context of the person you’re helping. There are many arrows in the quiver for doctors.
Empathy and compassion are at the heart of medical practice, understanding a person’s experiences and emotions and responding with kindness and support. High-quality communication skills enable better care through active listening and communication and addressing specific concerns. Clinical intuition (gut feeling) is developed over many years of hard work and attention to patient outcomes, whereby doctors give advice that goes beyond the available evidence. Ethical considerations for doctors involve navigating the complexities that frequently arise in the real world and balancing autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice whilst seeing the person in front of you and dealing with their ailment.
The doctor as drug theory from Balint emphasised the dynamic nature of the doctor-patient relationship. He maintained that “the most powerful therapeutic tool the doctor possessed was himself or herself”. Balint’s theory was that over time the doctor obtained the patient's trust and confidence, such that they began to know more and more about his patient's personality, social and physical environments, their biography and their relationships. Each new consultation was more effective, providing better insight into the patient’s needs.
Balancing technology and care
The future of AI in healthcare is becoming a trusted co-pilot that takes care of the secretarial, administrative, and latest evidence-based treatment options and allows the physician to return to the role of the empathetic, holistic, considered advisor. AI has the potential to rebalance Balint’s theory of continuity and build trust between patients and their physicians.
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