Imminent Transformations in Health

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Darleen Adelia Hutchinson
5 years ago
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1 Imminent Transformations in Health Written By: Dr. Hugh Rashid, Co-Chair Technology & Innovation Committee American Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai AmCham Shanghai s Technology and Innovation Committee and Healthcare Committee hosted an exciting event on digital transformation of healthcare industry. Dr. Hugh Rashid presented the keynote speaker, Professor Ramesh Jain, Department of Computer Science at University of California, Irvine, to share his latest study on Imminent Transformations in Health. Professor Ramesh Jain painted a compelling vision for personal health that has the potential to disrupt the healthcare industry when it comes to dealing with chronic diseases. Following are the highlights of key insights he shared. The current Healthcare systems have largely been designed around how we deal with infectious diseases while 7 out to 10 death are now caused by chronic diseases.

2 Chronic diseases are affected by two factors: genetics and lifestyle. Lifestyle is clearly in our hands but the technology has not made huge contribution in helping us make it easy to manage our life style proactively. There are of course apps, wearables and websites that address pieces of the puzzles but we have the potential of going much further. In order to think of new possibilities, we need to first rethink that basic ideas that have driven the industry. First, when we think of health, we think of disease while we should be thinking of health as heath and not health-care or a health problem that needs to be fixed. Second, when it comes to lifestyle and it's impact on our health, we can be in a better position than the doctor in knowing what is going on (if we can truly leverage the power of digital technologies such as those available for navigation, e- commerce, and soon, the self-driving cars). Even though genetic engineering has a lot of potential in the long-term to help us tailor customized medical responses, lifestyle management can be a much powerful weapon against chronic diseases in the short term. With all the modern technologies that we have available from self-driving cars, big data, machine learning, we have the potential to provide new level of personalized experience to manage our lifestyle. Imagine your phone giving you recommendations of places to eat or what to order that you are likely to enjoy and, also help you meet your lifestyle goals. Imagine you sharing your personal lifestyle data with your doctor so that he has more insights before making important decisions about your health rather than relying on routine basic questions about your smoking, drinking or eating habits based on few history data points that you may or may not recall. Imagine you getting a letter from the insurance company that based on your lifestyle score your insurance premium is being reduced. There and many

more scenarios that are possible and within reach but will require technology platform architecture that hides the complexity and providers a friendly, proactive, and personalized user experience to

3 more scenarios that are possible and within reach but will require technology platform architecture that hides the complexity and providers a friendly, proactive, and personalized user experience to help us navigate our lifestyle. Lifestyle changes are hard for several reasons. First, you don t have the data to know how well you are doing or how much more you need to do in the various lifestyle dimensions. Nor do you have actionable real-time data to guide you what to eat and where. You might have various apps and even a wearable device but they are not integrated and not aware of the total activity picture or even who you are as a person. Technologies are entering our life to help us with our health but they are moving in the direction of cluttering our life with disjointed point solutions and perhaps may even turn people off if they don t consider the overall context or not actually help you act in ways that support your lifestyle goals. Technology needs to move to an entirely new level of make it possible. Think about what would happen if there are many devices, apps and sensors in the car and they are not aware of each other or the environment and not act in concert together. Would a desirable self-driven car experience be possible without such coordinated intelligence? The same is true for lifestyle experience to be truly useful and practical! The realize this disruptive digital transformation in the healthcare industry will require a platform approach with three core components. 1. Personal Model: Each person is unique and a detailed individual data models (with personalized business rules) will be critical (just like they are for Google or Amazon to better understand our behavior and recommend what we should look at or what we should buy). 2. Observations: Will allow us to know the state of the person which includes data about food, activities, emotions, medical condition as well our surrounding environment. The granularity

4 and correlations of this data will be critical and will provide insights that have never been possible before. 3. Guidance: Using advance analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, when combined with personal models and observations, will enable powerful lifestyle navigation (Apps etc.) to guide and help us stay on top of our heath and few steps ahead of chronic diseases. To enable such a vision will require intensive collaboration between healthcare industry and the technology industry. In fact, such collaboration is at the heart of challenges, complexity and opportunities that are underway in all industries such as auto, retail and manufacturing. This is where the new Institute of Future Health that Ramesh is heading come into play. The center is designed to facilitate collaboration between heath industry and the technology industry and also provide a platform to engage with outside startups and large companies looking to participate in this meaningful digital transformation of the healthcare industry. The center, of course, will also be engaged in ground breaking research projects that will benefit all the collaborators in finding opportunities for innovation and commercialization of ideas to help the broader society better deal with chronic diseases.

5 In fact, the center already has its first app called Heath Butler slated for release later this year. The center is open for business and ready to partner with anyone interested in turning this health vision into reality. David Basmajian, representing the healthcare committee, introduced the panel for the discussion and Q&A session which included Dr. Hong Xin from Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Hau Liu from United Family Healthcare and Dr. Hugh Rashid from Xavor Corporation. David opened the session by asking the panelist for their reflection of the keynote presentation. There was consensus that the vision shared is in fact the direction of the future and that is it a matter of when rather than if, even though such a transformation will not be easy. During the panel discussion and Q&A there were many lively comments and ideas exchanged between the panelist and the audience. Dr. Hong Xin from Johnson & Johnson pointed out how J&J has been intensely following the emerging trends and has been cautiously moving forward with various innovations internally and in partnership with external community. Professor Ramesh point out that J&J, with its brand and relationship with hospital, is in a great position to influence the overall healthcare ecosystem.

6 Dr. Hau Liu shared his excitement of the possibilities of the vision shared by Ramesh in better managing the chronic disease challenge in places like China. He however pointed out that a lot more will be needed beyond technology to make this digital transformation a reality considering the diverse nature of China and its complex social and political environment. Interesting point was made regarding the intersection of diet & fitness industry with the healthcare industry that can have a huge potential in dealing with chronic diseases. Ramesh pointed out that indeed there are lot of complementary areas and opportunities for these two to come together under the personal lifestyle navigation vision. An interesting observation that came out during panel discussion was regarding over reliance on medicine in the western cultures while in the eastern cultures, like India and China, people are used to relying on long-term lifestyle approaches to heath. With size of population of these two countries, increasing chronic disease problems and severely lacking hospitals and modern medicines, there is indeed be an opportunity to focus on China and Indian markets to test and implement lifestyle innovations. Overall lot of work will be needed to influence the industry and to shift the mindset of healthcare providers and doctors, and this is where companies like Johnson & Johnson can play an important role using their relationship and influence with the healthcare providers. It was also pointed out that there could be several legal and privacy issues that might make it difficult for large companies to move forward aggressively. However, this is where startups and rebel entrepreneurs come in and often are the catalyst for disruption process to start. The self-driving car revolution is not being driven by large auto companies nor was the online retail industry disruption triggered by the traditional large retail stores. When it comes to providing the legal support for this digital transformation in such a sensitive area like healthcare, the role of governments cannot be underestimated. With rising concern of privacy issues and data security at national level, it will not be easy but then no disruptions or radical transformations are. However, tackling chronic disease has been a losing battle for many nations and if technology can help turn the tide it may get the necessary support sooner than we might think. Ramesh recommended that to get more insights into the potential of this disruption and digital transformation, interested audience should read the following two books.

7 We are in the beginning of this exciting disruption that can have the highest social return for society. There are hundreds of opportunities for devices, apps, services and business models but will require diverse players to come together to deeply understand the human and technology challenges, gain insights, generate idea and create concept and test them in real human situations before settling on the final innovation that get diffused through society. About Speakers and Panelists:

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