Learn about the three major themes driving the epatient trends that will forever change healthcare. Coauthor Fard Johnmar explains.
It’s no secret that the movement of the “e-patient” is well underway. Armed with a slew of mobile devices and ample information at their fingertips, patients are looking at their healthcare a bit differently these days. As a result, healthcare providers need to start looking at their patients in a new light—because innovation isn’t just changing healthcare from a technological perspective—it’s a changing it from a human one, too.At least that’s the prevailing message in Fard Johnmar’s and Rohit Bhargava’s new book, “ePatient 2015: 15 Surprising Trends Changing Healthcare.” The book, which was written with the intent of demystifying how digital technology is poised to profoundly change the healthcare landscape, is the culmination of an effort nearly four years in the making.
Johnmar, who is a futurist and president and founder of digital health consultancy Enspektos, first met Bhargava, the best-selling author of “Likeonomics” and CEO and founder of the Influential Marketing Group, in person in 2009 during an FDA hearing on how the agency should regulate pharmaceutical marketing on social media and the Web. About a year ago, the pair decided to work together to collect and interpret an amalgam of evidence (including original survey research, news reports, and published studies) to explore and explain what’s to come from the evolution of digital technology that has given rise to the e-patient.
According to Johnmar, with healthcare technology reaching its peak of popularity, it’s the perfect time to start making sense of it all.
A Human Approach to Healthcare Technology
With that in mind, the book takes a deep dive into the digital world by first putting that human frame front and center in the form of two fictional characters, Sally and Henry. Sally has a feverish three-year-old, and Henry has a life-threatening illness, but in 2015 they have something in common thanks to technology—unprecedented access to helpful and sophisticated health information, access to medical professionals, digital tools, and improved social support.
Instead of merely focusing on the impending influx of wearable health-monitoring devices, health applications, electronic medical records, DNA analysis, social media outlets, and online forums, Johnmar and Bhargava introduce the topic with what’s really exciting about technology’s potential in healthcare: the way it can improve, and perhaps even save, lives. In 2015, Sally is a mother with greater access to technologies and medical professionals to help her ailing child, and Henry is a patient with a newfound sense of hope in beating his illness thanks to advances in DNA analysis and online support. It’s quite a profound and personal preamble to a book focused on technology, but for Johnmar and Bhargava, it was important that they get personal about healthcare technology before getting technical.
“The future of healthcare is about more than economics, politics, and individual technologies,” said Johnmar. “We want readers to come away with a deeper appreciation to the human side of innovation and understand that looking at the big picture is required, rather than optional.”
So what does that big picture look like for healthcare? That was the question that drove Johnmar and Bhargava to researching the relationship that is progressing between humans and health-related technology, which ultimately lead them to discover 15 surprising trends. To understand those trends, however, you must first understand why they exist.
