A “Zoom” Call With Your PCP Does Not Solve the Key Challenges of Healthcare

By Dr. Ali Parsa, Founder and CEO of Babylon 

It took nothing short of a global pandemic to force the system to adopt telemedicine at scale. While this was a necessary first step, on its own it does little to provide a meaningful solution to the challenges of accessibility and affordability of healthcare.

Research shows that two factors have an outsized responsibility for inaccessibility and unaffordability of healthcare. First, predictable and preventable illnesses are responsible for almost 70% of healthcare expenditure. The current system we call healthcare is misnamed; it was designed for “sick care” and should be renamed as such. The healthcare challenges in much of the world are structural and not incidental. It is the result of a reactive, episodic, clinic/hospital centric, “fee for service” system that normally waits for emergencies before intervening, therefore resulting in a crisis-prone expensive model. 

Second, about two-thirds of all healthcare costs are in salaries. “Sick-care” as it should be called, is one of the most labor-intensive and inefficient sectors in the global economy. This is worsened by the increasing imbalance between rapidly rising demand for care and a dwindling supply of clinicians. In the U.S. for instance, over 40% of active physicians will be aged 65+ within the next decade and 1/5 of doctors say that they will likely leave their current practice within the next two years. This imbalance has been creating persistent inflationary pressures on the affordability (and accessibility) of care. 

Digital health should go beyond live, one-on-one doctor and patient appointments. Digital health providers should focus on solving the root causes of the challenges healthcare faces rather than replicating the same physical models digitally. Our task is to rethink, reshape and not recreate. By combining cutting edge technology with the best medical expertise we can invent a digital-first, data-centric, proactive, and largely automated and integrated care service for population health management at scale. Central to this approach is the continuous monitoring and collection of relevant data, algorithms for real time and intelligent analysis, protocols for appropriate rewarding and alerting, and a scalable and proactive, digital first “health service” that can intervene early before small concerns become unwanted and unnecessary emergencies. When it comes to intervention, our approach should be to focus on increasing automation and transfer of tasks to appropriate resources. Digital health needs to create an alternative to the current labor-intensive model. We need to make it possible to seamlessly transition from digital chat to virtual remote consultations to physical referral, and from automated bots to care assistants to clinicians and specialists as appropriate. 

The human body is a complex, integrated system that is fine-tuned to respond quickly to its environment, whether in stasis or distress. What we need is more than a telehealth, but rather an effective “digital health” resource that fully embraces and manages our health with a holistic approach. Our industry should keep pushing the boundaries of an integrated digital health experience to answer the needs of today’s patients in a modernized, connected healthcare system. When COVID-19 catalyzed change in the world of digital healthcare, it brought a telehealth solution that improved some of the system’s problems, but has not yet lived up to its potential. By optimizing digital health as a fully-integrated, proactive and data-centric experience, our industry can make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all.

Babylon is a proud Sponsor of ATA2023. Hear more from Dr. Ali Parsa during his CEO Spotlight presentation on the Main Stage or visit the Babylon Team at Booth #502 on the Exhibit Floor.

Dr. Ali Parsa is a British-Iranian healthcare entrepreneur and engineer. He’s the founder and CEO of Babylon, the revolutionary artificial intelligence and digital health company. Babylon’s mission is to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on Earth. By combining cutting-edge AI technology and the best available medical expertise, Babylon gives people 24/7 access to affordable, holistic health services. The company is home to a large, passionate team of scientists, clinicians, mathematicians and engineers—all recruited from over 60 different countries. With over 3 million users, Babylon is transforming the way healthcare works across Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.