The Digital Revolution in Health Care: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Need for Policy Innovation

New medical technologies have saved and improved millions of lives in recent decades. Yet the digital technologies that are transforming contemporary health care, such as digital medical devices, applications of medical software, and artificial intelligence tools to diagnose and treat patients, would be unrecognizable to the 20th-century architects of our regulatory and healthcare delivery institutions. For example, many digital health applications (apps) meet the formal definition of a medical device, yet their fully software-based nature means that established practices for evaluating their safety and efficacy are incompatible with the dynamic nature of the apps themselves.

The quickly transforming scientific and technological foundations of medical invention—combined with the rapid pace of innovation—no longer fit our existing institutional structures. This mismatch underlies many of today’s challenges in commercializing new products and creates significant bottlenecks for incorporating new innovations into care delivery. Professor Stern’s presentation will focus on how the development and adoption of healthcare technology are shaped by the interaction between healthcare innovators, regulators, and healthcare delivery institutions. She will also present policy and business model innovations that address key challenges to technology adoption in this setting.

Our Experts

• Professor Ariel D. Stern, Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Digital Health, Economics, and Policy at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Full Professor at the University of Potsdam, and Poronui Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
• Dr. Thomas J. Fuchs, Co-Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, Dean of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Health, and Professor of Computational Pathology and Computer Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai