Baird Global Healthcare Report 2016-2017 Global Healthcare Report | Page 8

Patients, payers and healthcare providers
will all benefit as technology and conventional
healthcare continue to converge.

BILL SUDDATH
As the broader Healthcare environment
continues to change, the reality is that
technology is what will help the industry
adjust to some of these secular shifts and
what will separate the more successful
providers and payers from the less successful.

Technology is becoming valuable for
physicians as well, as it helps them manage
the self-pay portion of their practices. Today,
physicians receive roughly 30 percent of their
gross revenue from their patients’ pockets.
Consequently, they need to figure out how
to use technology to motivate patients to
pay, make it easy to submit payment and
help patients truly understand what they
are paying for.

A number of companies are also entering into partnerships
and joint ventures to codevelop innovative medical solutions
that leverage technology and traditional device expertise.
In just the past few years, Google has partnered with Novartis
to develop smart contact lenses and with Dexcom to develop
miniaturized, disposable blood glucose monitors.

WHO DO YOU BELIEVE WILL BE THE
BIGGEST LONG-TERM BENEFICIARIES
OF THE CONTINUING COEVOLUTION OF
TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTHCARE?

6

On the payer side, technology is becoming
equally critical and valuable because more
and more of the Medicare and Medicaid
population is moving to managed care
models. There is a greater need to capture
data about that population, which in turn impacts the subsidies
the U.S. government pays to managed care providers. So what
this means is that payers are now equally very focused on getting
data to manage patient populations, implementing solutions to
change their behavior and simultaneously improving the quality
of care while decreasing its cost.
RYAN MAUSEHUND
From a patient standpoint, advances in technology certainly yield
better outcomes. In turn, payers are gaining the ability to identify
patients earlier and treat them with better therapies. This could
help bend the cost curve as well.