Blumenthal: Apple’s Health Care Pact ‘Might Actually Disrupt the Industry’
<p>Apple’s announcement in January that 13 prestigious U.S. health care systems had agreed to allow the company to download their patients’ electronic health data, with permission, onto its devices may not have gotten the attention it deserves. In fact, David Blumenthal, M.D., and Aneesh Chopra write in <em>Harvard Business Review </em>that the new pact has the potential to “liberate health care data for game-changing new uses, including empowering patients as never before.”</p><p>According to Blumenthal, the Commonwealth Fund’s president, and Chopra, president of the health analytics firm CareJourney, “a world in which patients have ready access to their own electronic data with the help of facilitators like Apple creates almost unfathomable opportunities to improve health care and health.”</p>
<p>While acknowledging the many obstacles and uncertainties still to be overcome, the authors say the collaboration between leading providers of health and information technology services “likely signals a new era in health and medicine.” They argue it’s a shakeup the U.S. health system needs.</p>