(SPONSORED) Eric Dishman, Intel Fellow and General Manager of the Health & Life Sciences Group, Intel Corporation, sees the healthcare delivery system moving toward an ecosystem in which technology helps to empower patients and smart care teams and networks, genome sequencing enables personalized medicine and a patient-centric application of care will realize the concept of “care anywhere.”

Dishman is an Intel Fellow and General Manager of the Health & Life Sciences Group, responsible for driving Intel’s strategy, R&D, new product and policy initiatives for health and life science solutions. He is known for pioneering techniques that incorporate anthropology, ethnography and other social science methods into the design and development of new technologies. His organization focuses on growth opportunities for Intel in health IT, genomics & personalized medicine, consumer wellness and care coordination technologies.

Q: You have a very personal and unique story about how big data saved your life. Can you share what happened?

A: I’m happy to share. Some 25 years ago I was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer and the prognosis was bleak. The doctors told me I needed to prepare to die. But I started doing research on my own condition and the doctors’ proclamations, and it turned out that they didn’t know anything about me. I managed to become a data-driven, proactive patient carving out my own path and turned cancer into a chronic disease until my kidneys started to fail. Then my options were limited.

But I got lucky. A company that Intel was working with offered to sequence my entire genome. After months of analysis and terabytes of data, my doctors told me they had misdiagnosed me for 25 years. They said they didn’t have a way of discovering this information before genome sequencing. That’s the power of what I call “Big Discovery” rather than “Big Data.” This big discovery in my life meant I could get a kidney transplant and now I am as healthy as anyone. All thanks to big data analytics. In healthcare, big discovery into genomic information will propel personalized medicine. I’m living testament, but only about 50,000 people have had their full genomes sequenced. There is a long way to go. But to me, it’s clear that this is the future of medicine.

Q: How do you see the healthcare system evolving?

A: Aided by technology and pressured by rising costs, we’re going to see a huge shift toward “care anywhere.” Humans invented the idea of hospitals and clinics in the 1780s. It is time to update our thinking. We have to untether clinicians and patients from the notion of traveling to bricks-and-mortar places for all of our care because these places are often the wrong tools, and the most expensive tools, for the job. These facilities are sometimes unsafe places to send our sickest patients, especially in an era of superbugs and hospital-acquired infections.

Many countries are going to go brickless from the start because they’re never going to be able to afford the mega-medicalplexes that many countries have built. Smartphones and other diagnostic devices will allow patients to supply information to doctors without having to physically appear at a hospital or clinic. This scenario is a game-changer for evolving the current healthcare environment.

Q: What about the impact of technology on providers and care teams? What’s the future look like for interacting with patients?

A: Once we have devices helping us to do care anywhere, it stands to reason that we also will need a team to be able to interact with that information. That is what I call care networking. We have to go beyond today’s paradigm of isolated specialists and move toward multidisciplinary teams doing personal care. Uncoordinated care today is expensive at best, and is deadly at worst. Eighty percent of medical errors are actually caused by communication and coordination problems amongst medical team members.

I had my own heart scare years ago in graduate school. Three different specialists had prescribed three different versions of the same drug to me. I did not have a heart problem. I had an over-medication problem. I had a care coordination problem. And this happens to millions of people every year. I want to use technology to make healthcare a coordinated team sport. The most important point here is that the sacred, and somewhat over-romanticized, one-on-one doctor-patient appointment, is a relic of the past. The future of healthcare is smart teams. And that team includes you, the empowered patient.

For more information on how Intel helping to enable powerful and security mobile healthcare, please visit www.intel.com/healthcare/mobility.

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About Intel: Intel Corporation’s vision is to deliver innovative computing technologies and solutions that will improve the quality of healthcare delivery and access while reducing unnecessary costs for billions of people worldwide. Intel teams with governments, healthcare organizations, and technology innovators worldwide to build tomorrow’s health IT tools and services.

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