"We're in for a rocket ride these next 10 years," says Peter Diamandis.

An innovator and futurist, Diamandis is is the kind of guy who went to both MIT (bachelor's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering) and Harvard (MD). A pilot, his X PRIZE Foundation has helped pioneer private spaceflight and now puts on huge global competitions to help find envelope-pushing solutions to other pressing "market failures."

He's also the co-founder of Human Longevity Inc., a genomics company focused on extending the human lifespan, and of Singularity University, a graduate-level program focused on transforming various industries – healthcare not the least of them – through the the application of exponentially-evolving technologies.

In an animated speech this past fall at the CHIME 2014 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Diamandis said "extraordinary change and opportunities are on the near-term horizon" for healthcare.

The way technology evolves on the world stage has changed in the past few decades, he said, from the "local and linear" of old to the "global and exponential" of today.

"We are in a massive period of growth," said Diamandis, and these exponential technologies are set to disrupt and improve all sorts of industries – especially healthcare.

"I'm someone who believes we're heading toward a world of extraordinary healthcare abundance. a world in which every man, women and child is going to have access to healthcare at a level that is democratized and de-monetized around the world."

Singularity University takes its name from co-founder Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, which predicts that, by 2045, the law of accelerating returns in genetics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will lead humanity to a point where it is fundamentally and irreversibly transformed.

[See also: Robot, MD: Will machines replace docs?]

Based in Silicon Valley, the school says its "mission is to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges."

"We challenge our students: Start a company that has potential to impact a billion people in 10 years," says Diamandis. "That's our metric for success, because that's the world we're living in today."

And today is an "extraordinary time to be alive," he said. From AI to robotics to nano-sensors, "these technologies are exploding onto the scene right now" and are set to transform care delivery in ways we can scarcely imagine.

Don't believe it? Diamandis asks us to consider the case of Kodak. Forty years ago, the camera and film colossus was near the peak of its powers, accounting for nearly 90 percent of U.S. film sales and 85 percent of camera sales.

Around that time, in 1975, a Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, invented the first digital camera. It was just .01 megapixels, but weighed eight pounds.

"They invented the technology that would enable the future," said Diamandis.

"What happened, though, was that the leadership didn't realize what they had," he said. "They didn't realize the rate of growth this exponential technology would take. They said, 'That's not us! We make beautiful, high-resolution images. And besides, we're in the paper and chemicals business. What is this thing?'"

Kodak kept selling cameras and film for the next two decades as the digital camera quietly and slowly evolved. By 1996, the company was at its apex, with revenues peaking at around $16 billion.

But then the digital camera started to evolve much more quickly. And by 2012, Kodak filed had for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection: "disrupted by the very technology they had invented."

To put things in some perspective, that same year, another company in the digital imaging business, Instagram, was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion.