Information technology is finally having a meaningful impact on medical research and treatment.
It's plain to anyone who has visited the doctor that medicine's relationship with information technology is tenuous at best. Merely hoping to have a timely email exchange with a physician can be an exercise in futility.
My ears perked up, then, when Bernard Tyson, CEO of the 11 million-member Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, known as Kaiser Permanente, bragged last week that more than half of Kaiser's interactions with its patients are virtual. Kaiser's doctors use smartphones, kiosks, video conferencing and other tools to “see” patients when a physical visit isn't necessary. Tyson says the traditional health care system is organized to “fix” patients. Because vertically integrated Kaiser makes money whether or not it treats its patients, its incentive is to keep customers healthy as much as to cure or mend them.
