Policies Of The Best Healthcare For Everyone

Every Disruptive Technology Is Claiming Part Of The Healthcare, Yet What Seems To Be Lagging Are The Policies Around Them

Illumination publication initially publicized this article on Medium!

As disruptive technologies are revolutionizing the healthcare domain, as an upshot, more and more questions are rising about the legality, safety, and ethical nature around them. It also appears that the healthcare technological shifts are happening way faster than the medical communities and even policymakers can adapt.

Undoubtedly, every healthcare leader's ambition is to improve medical care and the well-being of all citizens. However, one definitely, can't accomplish such a futuristic mission given the dyssynchrony between policies, public perception, and technocrats.

Those who support technocracy as a government structure by ensuring policymakers' selection exclusively based on their domain expertise may not even see the full spectrum of social, economic, and ethical dilemmas on a particular disruption. To the irony of all, technocrats are behind healthcare technology disruptions.

Indeed, there is a power struggle between the policymakers, technocrats, the medical community in general, and the patients. Furthermore, more technological disruption further induces this synchrony amongst the latter players, thus creating more tension and vacuum in the healthcare domain.

The healthcare domain vacuum has drawn sundry players into its backyard, but not all are the most sincere in their games. More incompatible solutions, problems, and ultraorthodox strategies through radical changeover have riddled healthcare. One can attribute that to poor policies and outdated healthcare logistic infrastructure, where one should not exist without the other.

I do not intend to discuss the infrastructure here, as I have already published a few pieces on this topic. Nevertheless, I would like to brush up on some of the administrative responsibilities one can anticipate from policymakers.

Undoubtedly, Healthcare Policies Are Purely On Digital Technologies, And Their Disruptors Are Utterly Lagging

One policy that has caught healthcare stakeholders' attention is the patient-centric approach. The recommendation involves engaging patients in developing various technologies they intend to use for their medical care. For instance, a patient living in a rural neighborhood with diabetes may be an excellent partner in creating a system that addresses their remote care options.

I published the article a while ago, "Trusting Technology is Not the Same as Trusting its Architects ." The idea behind the publication was to epitomize that every Technology is nothing but an instrument, and it is the architect's responsibility to ensure the legitimacy of its particular innovation. Likewise, it is the policymaker's burden to provide such rightfulness by creating proper transparency and accountability.

Responding to ethical challenges is another frontline every supportive policy must face. Everything from data protection to algorithms that will prevent Artificial Intelligence powered machines from targeting cancer cells and not the people's integrity is a challenge that policymakers must consider at all times. However, addressing ethical concerns around healthcare disruptors also demands transparency, accountability, and a logistics infrastructure that creates options for patients and healthcare stakeholders, not obligations.

And indeed, the public will not innately use any form of disruptors without all mentioned earlier in this piece without policies that promote the use of disruptive digital health technologies. Yet, it would be irrational to assume educated millennials should give up options and ownership of their health information and destiny only through rhetorical mottoes written by the wrong policymakers.

The Solution Starts With Individual Autonomy

No policy and mandate will be sufficient to build trust amongst healthcare stakeholders unless policymakers serve at the grassroots, which includes patients. Therefore, giving the ownership of the medical records back to the individuals is a good start.

Amidst the big data rush, almost every digital healthcare disruptors are not just disrupting healthcare. But, they are also distorting the most significant source of revenue of our time, "the big data," something that belongs to the patients and stakeholders of patient care. Yet, every disruptor uses that data for free, and there is no policy to prevent that embezzlement. Furthermore, patients are not the only victims of such corporate despotism. Physicians are becoming working robots for the robots created by modern healthcare technology disruptors.

Policies around digital health technology disruptors must catch up with technocrat contenders hoping they can build a trusting healthcare community, or we will continue the path of wrongful patient care cataclysm.