I have been co-founding health-tech companies, investing in healthcare, mentoring health-tech founders now for 12 years. That’s longer than the decade I spent at Apple as CEO.
The biggest change in healthcare is VBC (Value Based Care). CMS launched a decade long policy initiative back in 2014 to shift the $3.5 trillion US healthcare industry from ‘fee for service’ regardless of patient outcomes to an incentives and penalties reimbursement model where health plans can make more money if they deliver better patient outcomes while risking big financial penalties if chronic care patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge.
By 2024 I expect the US health system will be shifting from an institutional hierarchy vertically organized into unconnected silos to a horizontal structure with everything organized around making consumers the center of focus. Platforms, smart transactional automation, highly integrated health data going horizontally end-to-end across the health diagnostic to health treatment delivery will become the norm by the mid-2020s. Look back to how Intel and Microsoft were the primary forces that changed the computer industry in a similar way 30 years ago.