Patient Engagement

Watch: Patient ‘enragement’ in 2016, digital health in every home

Will many physicians even be necessary in a decade or two? Frost & Sullivan analyst Nancy Fabozzi discusses in a video interview.

Forget patient engagement for now. 2016 just might turn out to be the year of “consumer enragement” in healthcare, according to a veteran industry watcher.

Pushback has already started against soaring drug prices and insurance premiums, Nancy Fabozzi, principal analyst for connected health at research firm Frost & Sullivan, noted in a video interview with MedCity News. Plus, there’s a vocal, if not large, movement to give consumers better access to their health data.

But that’s not the boldest prediction Fabozzi made. (We’re both clearly qualified to be visionaries because we’re sporting black turtlenecks in the video.)

“Technology will reshape the medical profession, in many cases, replacing physicians for routine care,” Fabozzi declared in spelling out her expectations for what she calls the “electronic doctor” might look like 10 or 20 years from now.

This “electronic doctor,” which might be about the size of a first-aid kit, could become a staple in American homes in a decade or two. It will be equipped with biometric monitoring, diagnostic and other digital health technologies, and feed data to a cloud-based medical record, augmented with artificial intelligence, Fabozzi said.

While physicians will still be needed for surgeries and major illnesses such as cancer, the profession promises to change medicine drastically, she forecast.

Watch highlights here:

Photo: Flickr user pasukaru76

Shares0
Shares0