by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | October 20, 2017
From the October 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: How do you predict health care will evolve over the next decade?
GA: Health care will become much more digital, meaning communicating with our doctors and nurses via email or text, and our EMRs sending out reminders to patients to take their medication or to go out for a walk and exercise. There will be more virtual interactions. Many physician/patient interactions will not need to take place in an office anywhere. Vitals can be taken by a device and communications can take place via video chat. Health care facilities will continue to be more focused on diagnostics and treatment of sick patients.
While digital developments may seem to be driving people out of health care facilities, we’re also facing a continuing aging boomers population. We’re doing really well at taking care of people as they get older, but that also means that the number of people over age 65 will continue to grow as they live longer. For example, we can now replace a defective heart valve via catheter in an 85-year-old patient where previously they might not have been a candidate for open heart surgery. We’re going to continue to see more of these advances. Do we need to build more facilities? Or use the existing ones differently? There’s always going to need to be some expansion in facilities, but I think we will begin to use our existing facilities very differently.
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