By Raj Kumar, President & Editor-in-Chief, Devex
We live in an age of disruption. A decade ago, who would have imagined that working professionals would forgo a hotel room to instead crash on a stranger’s couch? Now AirBnB boasts more rooms than Hilton. Even something as time-honored as friendship is being turned upside down. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg claims that most people have, on average, just three close friends, and the social network aims to increase that to four. With over two billion people actively engaging on Facebook, this goal may indeed become a reality.
In a time when technology is cheap and ubiquitous, and when markets and human connections are re-imagined so quickly, a single idea–even an outlandish one–can be immensely powerful.
Healthcare has long been marked by such complexity that many view it as a daunting industry, and not a true open market. It’s a spaghetti bowl of providers, payers, patients and, of course, regulators. For the poorest people in the lowest resource settings, this complexity leads to too little care and high out-of-pocket costs. When a single illness can equate to economic disaster, healthcare looms over the heads of patients, casting a dark shadow of anxiety. The World Bank calculates the financial gap to remove that anxiety at $33 billion per year. This infusion of external financing from developed economies to support fragile healthcare systems could, quite literally, change the world.
As we work to close the gap, healthcare is in dire need of an innovative, disruptive, paradigm-changing idea. Consumer Powered Healthcare may be just that!
First, the simple shift from “patient” to “consumer” is powerful. The terminology is engaging and relatable for people in all walks of life.
Second, the notion that consumers would drive this vastly complex industry immediately helps to simplify it. The focus shifts from the spaghetti bowl to the person eating it.
Finally, the power of markets is implicit in this framing. Solid reasons exist as to why healthcare doesn’t operate as a simple open market. That said, technology provides an opportunity to transform the industry and allow for openness, transparency, and accessibility for ordinary people, driving down costs and increasing quality.
Hard work and dedication will be required from each of us. Governments need to invest more heavily in healthcare. Donors need to close the external financing gap. Providers need to innovate, upgrade, and make care available even in the most rural settings and for the most marginalized people.
But the spark in an idea like Consumer Powered Healthcare can ignite a world-changing movement. It’s an idea that puts people at the center of healthcare and that’s a disruption that many in the global health community–and in communities around the globe–will welcome.
