If data is the new oil, sick care is the new coal

It's been said that data is the new oil that is fueling the 4th industrial revolution. Others disagree. However, while the business models and value chains of oil and data might be different, the metaphor is used to describe the increasing value of data. Transforming into the cyberintellingent, mobile, digital economy has created a lot of pain to many people and made old industrial models, and their employees, obsolete or redundant, much like renewal energy is doing to the coal industry and workers.

Now we are hearing rumbles about changing sick care to healthcare , the fee for service model to value based care and the present payor model to "Medicare for all"...whatever that means. However it plays out, the die has been cast and there is an ongoing restructuring of the sick care industry that will cause a lot of pain and make the coal and petroeconomy meltdown look like a mere blip on the labor economy radar screen. Even clusters and innovation districts have a life cycle.

The US sickcare system of systems medapocalypse is looking something like this:

1. The future of sickcare work is changing
2. The doctor persona of the future is changing
3. Care delivery business models are changing
4. Patient expectations and demands are changing
5. Biopharma and medtech business models are changing
6. Hospitals and traditional care delivery models are increasingly obsolete
7. The primary care model is being unbundled
8. One on one care is changing to team on team care
9. Medical education is being reformed
10. Biomedical and clinical ecosystems are changing driven by digital health technologies
11. Innovation financing is changing
12. Sickcare policy is changing
13. Intellectural property laws and FDA regulations are changing.
14. Reimbursement models are changing
15. Patient and doctor behavior change models are evolving

The personal computer changed the world. Sustainable energy technologies are doing the same to the petroeconomy as will self-driving electric cars, robots, AI and the other shiny objects on the shelf.

Prepare yourself and your kids now for the opportunities this presents.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Twitter@ArlenMD