Hospitals of the Future: Technology Innovation vs. Business Model Innovation

[Lance M.]

Listed below are excerpts from yesterday's NYTimes article: Disruptive Innovation, Applied to Health Care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/business/01unbox.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


Successful business models are moving more toward pay for wellness vs. pay for acute or chronic treatments. It's not going to be "The Hospital of the Future", more likely, "the patient-centric business model of the future that bypasses the hospital."

Here are two company examples. I wonder if there is a comprehensive listing of such companies and their market cap projection for 2009-2012?

Lance Manning


http://www.americanwell.com/aboutus.html
American Well™ has created a new healthcare marketplace where consumers and physicians come together online, to acquire and provide convenient and immediate healthcare services. Using the latest technologies in Web communications and digital telephony, the Company extends traditional healthcare services to the home setting.


http://www.lifewire.ca/
Life:WIRE™ is focused on a simple and cost-effective solution for individuals to proactively manage their disease and health conditions through use of a standard, off-the-shelf cellphone as an interactive health management tool.



-Instead, the country needs to innovate its way toward a new health care business model — one that reduces costs yet improves both quality and accessibility.

-Two main causes of the system’s ills are century-old business models, for the general hospital and the physician’s practice, both of which are based on treating illness, not promoting wellness. Hospitals and doctors are paid by insurers and the government for the health care equivalent of piecework: hospitals profit from full beds and doctors profit from repeat visits. There is no financial incentive to keep patients healthy.

-“The business models were all created decades ago, and acute disease drove those costs at the time,” says Steve Wunker, a senior partner at the consulting firm Innosight. “Most businesses in this industry are looking at their business model as entirely immutable. They’re looking for innovative offerings that fit this frozen model.”

-“Health care hasn’t become affordable,” he said in an interview, “because it hasn’t yet gone through disruptive decentralization.”