Bill Gates On Healthcare
by David E. Williams
Health Business Blog
I enjoyed reading Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’s op-ed piece in today’s (Oct 5) Wall Street Journal, Health Care Needs an Internet Revolution. In comparison with his fellow Win-Tel chairman, Gates is more level headed and exhibits a greater understanding of health care.
Gates reminds us of the high cost and low quality of health care. His proposed solution is to focus on better assembly and use of the data that are available now, and for enhancing the role of individual patients in this process:
Toward the end of the piece, Gates take an indirect swipe at Google while laying down Microsoft’s chosen strategy:
It will be quite a while before Microsoft’s new foray into health care pays off. But this is a company to watch for the long-term. I have the feeling that Microsoft’s maturity and resources will be powerful competitive advantages not only against Google but against upstarts like Revolution Health as well.
Health Business Blog is a regular contributor to BioHealth Investor
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Health Business Blog
I enjoyed reading Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’s op-ed piece in today’s (Oct 5) Wall Street Journal, Health Care Needs an Internet Revolution. In comparison with his fellow Win-Tel chairman, Gates is more level headed and exhibits a greater understanding of health care.
Gates reminds us of the high cost and low quality of health care. His proposed solution is to focus on better assembly and use of the data that are available now, and for enhancing the role of individual patients in this process:
By giving us comprehensive access to our personal medical information, digital technology can make us all agents for change, of pushing for the one thing that we all really care about: a medical system that focuses on our lifelong health and prioritizes prevention as much as it does treatment. Putting people at the center of health care means we will have the information we need to make intelligent choices that will allow us to lead healthy lives…
Toward the end of the piece, Gates take an indirect swipe at Google while laying down Microsoft’s chosen strategy:
No one company can –or should—hope to provide the single solution that makes all of this possible. That’s why Microsoft is working with a wide range of software and hardware companies, as well as with physicians, hospitals, government organizations, patient advocacy groups and consumers to ensure that, together, we can address critical issues like privacy, security and integration with existing applications.
It will be quite a while before Microsoft’s new foray into health care pays off. But this is a company to watch for the long-term. I have the feeling that Microsoft’s maturity and resources will be powerful competitive advantages not only against Google but against upstarts like Revolution Health as well.
Health Business Blog is a regular contributor to BioHealth Investor
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posted by Nico at
12:17 AM
2 Comments:
Except:
1) HealthVault feels like something that was thought up by a committee five years ago and has taken this long to get to the starting block.
2) It looks awful. Sack the designer.
3) It is document, not data-centric.
4) The site requires patients to spend hours organising their health documents for no obvious benefit to the patient or indeed the physician.
5) Don't even talk about privacy and confidentiality issues.
6) The site (they call it a platform) seems to be designed to sell low level services from diet-supplement companies. That's the revenue model: diet pills and Viagra knock offs. Wonderful.
7) In order to use these services the patient is required to enter their own health data, blood pressure, weight, drinking etc. Seriously, how can that be the foundation of a 'healthcare' site.
8) I am very, very doubtful about the stickiness of this site. What's going to make people keep coming back?
9) There are lots and lots of people in the public and private sectors trying to integrate healthcare data across organisations. Microsoft would have been better off backing those efforts. But of course then they wouldn't own the 'platform' and they couldn't sell us weight-loss supplements.
Another dog from Microsoft.
Yet again Microsoft shows us the staggering social cost that it represents to us all through the desire to 'own' everything it touches and its inability to innovate.
The company really does give capitalism, not a bad thing in itself, a rotten name.
It's those privacy and confidentiality issues that will sink Microsoft's efforts the same way it has sunk all the others before MS.
Face it, people are exhibitionistic in every way except their health. Every way. Except.
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