Forward-looking view of healthcare innovation, from a leading life science venture capitalist.

• Author: Burrill, G. Steven

Healthcare is in the midst of its most dramatic transformation in its history. The transformation is being driven by a confluence of factors. At the macro level, an aging population around the world, growing prosperity in emerging economies, and the rise of chronic disease is putting new demands on healthcare systems. Though the rate of growth of healthcare spending around the world has slowed in recent years, the longer-term march toward unsustainable levels of spending has forced governments to rethink the way healthcare is paid for and delivered and to scrutinize therapies through a new lens of value.

The sole practitioner, once the heart of healthcare in the United States, is giving way to care through integrated systems where nurse practitioners and physician assistants increasingly serve as a patient's first point of medical contact. Evolving scientific understandings of the molecular mechanisms of disease and the biology of health and wellness is leading to a new age of precision medicine. The convergence of information technology, communications technology, and medical technology is leading to a digital health revolution that at one end promises new insights into how to best treat and protect against disease, to surveillance tools that allow unprecedented ability to monitor patients in their daily lives and allow doctors to intervene at the earliest signs of change in an individual's...