Many advances in 21st-century healthcare will emerge from small organizations. Digital technologies will enable individual innovators to conquer pain, disease and despair. Insights will arc from other industries. Patients will manage their own health and healthcare as never before.
Healthcare innovation is beginning to resemble the information technology revolution that transformed life on this planet over the last 25 years — how we work, play, shop, communicate, relax, learn and travel. Long-established companies like IBM and government programs like ARPANET set the stage for IT's transformation. But society-altering innovations came from small, wildly competitive enterprises. Firms like Apple, Blackberry, Amazon and Facebook began in garages, basements and dormitories. Some startups became huge. Others vanished.
