One-on-One with Andy Slavitt, Board Chair & Founder, United States of Care
Q1: What do you envision the role of digital health will be in the future?
Andy: We can’t forget that at base level most interactions are person to person. Without digital health, we are led to the lowest common denominator – the interaction. The interaction between the patient and the provider. The only way we can share knowledge and scale with any consistency is with digital technologies. What we need in the healthcare system is the opportunity to walk into a care facility in a small town or a big city and have the same experience – get access to the latest knowledge and the best results. The only way you can do that is with digital. The other thing is – digital has to bring down costs, if it just making things fancier, we don’t need it. We don’t have enough efficiency and cost reduction. In other industries, technology is part of what helps keep costs down. Technology hasn’t yet proven to make healthcare less expensive, so that’s another challenge.