The Future
of Health Care
DANNY SCALISE
Gone are the days of a physician garbed in a white coat driving
his vehicle to a patient’s home. Today, one might only see a
medical bag in a museum or on television programs set in
another time. Medicine as a profession has been in existence
for centuries. The earliest known version of the Hippocratic
oath—an oath historically taken by physicians going back for
centuries—begins with “I swear by Apollo the Healer.” To-
day’s physician probably spends more time typing notes on a
laptop than yesteryear’s doctor spent on house call travel time,
and no one these days knows Apollo was a healer.
When Elon Musk said, “Some people don’t like change, but
you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster,” he was
talking about his attempts at disruptive innovation. However,
this quip also rings true with health care. As a result, the health
care of today would seem like science fiction to a provider from
50 years ago. In today’s health care industry, technology drives
a great deal of what happens. Take artificial intelligence, for
example. Once merely a subject found in movies, today’s health
care makes use of it to improve treatments for patients. Another
example is telemedicine. It might sound like a word from a for-
eign language, but in reality it gives a specialist in a city like
Morgantown the opportunity to treat a person in a rural area
like the southern coalfields of West Virginia who can’t make the
long drive for an office visit. Even the smartphone has become
a vital tool in the industry, connecting health care providers
with their patients much like it has connected the entire world.
The health care industry is constantly evolving thanks to
committed physicians, researchers and innovators. What was
true 50 years ago has long since been surpassed by techno-
logical advances, and by looking at these innovations and the
changes they are driving within the industry, it’s easy to imag-
ine what health care of the future will look like.
Patient Monitoring Made Easy
Apple is on the fourth generation of its popular Apple Watch.
In each new version, the developers create improved sensors
that do more than just check the wearer’s heart rate. While not
as robust as a sleep study, there are even apps that can graph
sleep patterns, record snoring and tell the user about his or
her quality of sleep.
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
These wearable devices with sensors give physicians more
data to discuss with their patients than they’ve had access to
in the past. What’s more, this data is from real life and not
just the moments spent in the exam room. As time goes on and
these wearable sensors become more accurate and can test for
more, some of the tests done in a lab may become obsolete.
A physician may even be able to look at the patient’s smart-
phone app data in lieu of invasive and oftentimes inconvenient
tests. Pair this technology with robot-assisted surgeries and
technology being developed to reduce errors in medication
dosage, and the impact technological innovation is having on
the entire industry is clear.
Telemedicine Eliminates Barriers
Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged
from one site to another via electronic communications to
improve a patient’s clinical health status. Using telemedicine,
physicians can do more than just have a conversation with a
patient who cannot come in for an office visit. The patient
can use the wearable technologies being developed and give
the doctor a glimpse of his or her status.
Apps that connect a patient to a physician in another location
are just beginning to gain traction in certain areas. While there
is no virtual substitute for a patient/physician relationship,
these apps have the potential to give people living in rural areas
like Southern West Virginia access to care when maintaining
a robust health care system can be costly and difficult in that
location. All they will need is a device and sufficient bandwidth.
Evolving Health Care Facilities
Thanks to technology, we are well on our way to the hos-
pital of tomorrow. Medical technologies have shortened the
visits that take place in an outpatient setting, and further in-
novation has taken what were formerly inpatient procedures
that were plagued with long, expensive stays and turned them
into an outpatient procedure or in certain cases same-day sur-
gery that has minimal or no overnight stays. While not very
comfortable or private, overnight hospital stays are expensive.
On top of the expense, the hospital is where all the sick
people are located. Statistically, a patient has a greater chance