No Such Thing as Big Medicine

Medicine is two steps behind while disease is two steps ahead

By: Brian Burke

Insurance and pharmaceutical companies have always been a weight on the shoulders of the medical field. Putting profits before health and refusing to cover those who really need it are just a few of the ways Wall Street exploits healthcare and pushes back on real advancement. But what if the health sector’s issue is being held back, not pushed back? While today’s tech giants add new features to their AR glasses, banks and retailers soak their data in neural networks, and Tesla inches closer to a functioning autonomous car, the healthcare sector is stuck on Windows 8. While incredible advances in the medical field have produced many breakthroughs in areas of immunization, prevention, and treatment, the medical field’s research and advancement drags behind that of technology, data science, and other STEM fields in a time when many threats exist to world health.

Most medical records are not on pad and paper but are stored electronically on a local network, designed and used to fit the specific needs of the hospitals accessing the network. However, these setups have prevented the medical world from becoming as connected as the rest of the world. If medical records were hosted on a national or global database, doctors and nurses all over the world would have everyone’s medical history without delay. Additionally, if all the data were stored within one database, big data analytics could be performed, making it easier to diagnose patients and develop personalized treatment options. Unfortunately, medical records need to be kept confidential, making security important and providing an obstacle to making the move to the cloud. Yet with the rise of blockchain and quantum computing, invulnerable encryption may not be as big of an issue as previously thought. Hesitance in adopting state-of-the-art e-security is credited to the U.S. healthcare system’s zero tolerance for security risk in medical records. Multiple blockchain companies have cultivated their networks in the developing world, skipping over United States markets due to the airtight health records regulations. Readily available, secure, and anonymous health records would provide unparalleled support for doctors and nurses in diagnosing and treating patients, both new and old. Regrettably, markets are strong where public opinion is held in high regard, steeply increasing the healthcare sector’s volatility; corrupted, exploited, and leaked medical records do not fare well in the eyes of society, ensuring American healthcare investors’ evasion of “risky” ventures. For the time being, doctors and nurses will be able to juggle medical records and histories, but over time everything will get more complicated. To overcome the influx of number of consumers and amount of consumer data, major corporations have spent billions in time and money transferring completely over to a virtual account system. Hospitals have enlisted the help of scribes to digitize what goes on at a doctor appointment. The duties of a scribe include documenting patient visits in their local EMR and assisting the doctors during consultations. However, due to the EMR program’s adolescence, the practice of recording visits has not been standardized, leading to countless organizational inconsistencies across these local networks. Currently, no internetwork exists, so hospitals are free to make EMR design choices as they see fit. While this practice may be convenient and efficient for the time being, it will only make creating the infrastructure, databases, and interface increasingly more difficult. Once again, a common theme in the medical field is that not enough is being done to pull the medical field forward technologically.

Diseases have many nasty tricks, but their deadliest may be their mutability. Every year, there are new strains of the flu and infectious diseases. The CDC predicts that 2020 will be one of the worst flu seasons yet. The CDC estimates that there have been almost ten million reported cases and about 10,000 to 25,000 deaths this season alone. Each year, we fight the offspring of the strains we didn’t kill the year before. Meanwhile, infectious diseases are always evolving; nine new germs spread by mosquitoes and ticks have been discovered or introduced since 2004. The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is wreaking havoc in China and has spread to the U.S. and other countries. To make matters worse, the world has never been more connected via planes, ships, and public transport, providing an opportunity for infectious diseases to rapidly spread from person to person. In the 1940s, doctors began prescribing penicillin for almost everything, along with a few other related drugs. Eventually, bacteria became immune to many over-prescribed antibiotics. Multidrug resistant bacteria begs the question: is there a limit to the immunity that bacteria can have to medical treatments? However, with data analytics, the medical field will finally have a leg up on predictive analysis. The math and science of machine learning, graph analytics, and time series analysis have already been tried and tuned by major technology, retail, and finance companies. All the medical field has to do is integrate it into their system. 

Millions of people stay at hospitals every night, and more visit the hospital throughout the day. Scheduling enough doctors and nurses to sufficiently care for the patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is one of the most difficult duties of hospital administration. Between inpatient care, clinic duty, outbreaks, scares, and everything else, hospitals can become dangerously understaffed very quickly. Furthermore, when the staff-to-patient ratio drops, the possibility of patient needs being overlooked rises, endangering them and other patients. Once again, in the days of such vast technological advancement and data analytics, these problems shouldn’t exist. Major corporations already use state-of-the-art analytics technology to schedule their employees to maximize workplace efficiency and employee satisfaction. Is it acceptable for a Walmart to be more labor-efficient than a hospital? Also, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and every other tech company are working on breaking into the future industry of wearables. Wearables refer to technology that is used by being worn such as smart watches, VR sets, and heart rate monitors. Integrating wearable technology into hospitals would enable closer oversight of patients care while giving deeper insight into patients’ condition. Taking real-time, constant measurements of patients’ vitals instead of once or twice every few hours could lead to shorter times for diagnosis, treatment, and a better understanding of the disease itself. This is another opportunity to save lives that is not being taken advantage of due to lack of funds and a change-averse environment.

The medical field is one of the biggest industries in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow through the hands of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and health administrators. However, while so many resources, both financial and laborious, are being directed into healthcare, it has been stuck on the treadmill for too long. While Silicon Valley and New York City use technology and data analytics to improve their products and services every day, hospitals are just trying to stay afloat. There are many obstacles to integrating advanced technology into the healthcare system, involving an infrastructure overhaul, thousands of hours of work, and security risks. But the decision is simple. The benefits outweigh the costs. Doctors and nurses are our last line of defense against disease, so how can we expect them to do their job if we don’t give them the right tools to do so? When it comes to saving lives, we should be tenacious in pursuing anything that allows us to save the most.