Health Insurance 2.0

Health insurance 2.0 is starting to take shape around the world as more and more developed and developing countries attempt to provide insurance to cover the needs of a growing middle class and respond to political pressures to provide coverage to more and more people. "The game changer, given the rising awareness of health insurance, will be the value proposition and the enabling ecosystem that insurers create while using the right distribution channels. What will enable insurers to provide personalised health solutions to its customers is the tremendous technological development in the healthcare industry, and the increasing adoption of connected devices. Insurers will be able to launch more personalised health insurance policies, provide incentives for preventive care such as discounts on premiums based on fitness and wellness."

It looks something like this:

1. Data driven and more personalized, both for the patients and care delivery professionals
2. Leveraging the opportunities when the IoT, biomedicine and the digital world collide
3. More DIY medicine
4. Reconciling high tech with high touch, emotional intelligence with artificial intelligence
5. Alternative, personalized distribution channels
6. Changes in traditional physician to physician referral patterns and referral management systems
7. Building the business case for patient wellness
8. Better strategies and tactics to change patient and doctor behavior
9. New ways to find and assess experience value factors (speed, convenience, service) that are separate and distinct from medically determined sick care quality outcomes and how they are linked or correlated
10. New business models, particularly for reaching underserved or difficult to access patients, whether they make $2/day or $200/day
11. Moving inpatient to the most appropriate out patient setting.
12. Fund startups and run innovation competitions designed to create insurance model innovation and value.
13. Value based offerings
14. Differing reimbursement and payment models for primary care v specialty care v procedural care
15. Paying for health instead of sick care

Like pharma 2.0. medtech 2.0 , digital health 2.0 and medical practice 2.0, insurance 2.0 will be the result of rapidly changing rules that will drive new ecosystems that will support enabling technologies and innovation. The challenge is to keep the wheels on while making all these blind turns.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs