Health Care As It Could Be In 2030

As a Chief Information Officer, I spend the bulk of my management time in the real world of I.T. costs, suppliers, business planning, operations improvement, projects, human dynamics and, of course, risk management and cybersecurity. I expect that is true for most of my peers as well.

- Alan V. Abramson

Achieving alignment of evolving business strategies with the power and delivery of information technology is typically the premier attribute looked for in senior I.T. leaders. So strategic thinking is not rare in health care or in health care I.T. leadership. In fact, just the opposite – it’s to be expected.

Thus, this is not intended as strategy. Rather, it’s about possibility; perhaps even inevitability. It’s more about where the ceaseless pace of technology innovation might carry us as an industry and a society.

I am trying to be more realistic than futuristic. To do that, I propose picking a future date and working backwards to observe the present as past and view trends at work today as their logical end state. The date is 2030. Why 2030? You will see as you read on.

“Looking back at our healthcare journey since that long ago day in 2017 when much younger versions of ourselves met to imagine the future–it’s clear that we got some things right and others… well, let’s just say our glasses were a bit out of focus.