The World Economic Forum — you know, the billionaire boys’ club that meets in Davos, Switzerland every year — has identified six opportunities for transforming healthcare: big data and analytics; remote access to data, including mobile health; genomics and precision medicine; consumerization; noncommunicable diseases, including chronic ailments; and value-based healthcare.
“This is all going to be data-driven,” Arnaud Bernaert, head of global health and healthcare industries for the WEF, said in the introductory clip from a series of videos on strategic shifts in healthcare. The videos are part of the World Economic Forum Academy program.
The video series includes interviews with innovators on each of the six topics the WEF named, including familiar people like Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson, Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton and HealthTap CEO Ron Gutman.
Interestingly, Bernaert said that the global market for healthcare treatments is $7 trillion. The WEF page links to a Forbes.com story estimating that the U.S. spends $3.8 trillion annually on healthcare. That would suggest that one country is responsible for more than half of the worldwide total, though Berneart qualified his statement by saying “treatments.” The U.S. spends more on healthcare administration than any other country, but by any measure, our inefficiency is staggering.
Photo: World Economic Forum Academy video capture.
