Preventative Healthcare, Better Late Than Never

In the healthcare industry, the idea has been around for years, if not decades: Rather than treating people only after they’ve become ill, doctors and hospitals need to offer proactive preventative care to the healthy and mildly sick. And for just as long, the adoption of this idea has been hobbling along as slowly as an infirm patient.

The winds may be changing. In a survey by healthcare advisory Chartis, some 90% of healthcare executives now say that healthcare, to remain viable, needs to shift from reactive to proactive care delivery in the next five years. “It’s a massive shift,” says Maneesh Dube, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. “Current modern medicine comes into play only when something goes wrong”—which is expensive, unpleasant for the patient, and often avoidable.

Preventative medicine dates back to the 1950s, as a marriage of illness prevention and public health. The concept of avoiding illness by nipping it in the bud was there from the beginning, but the resources were not. The latest shift comes thanks to an alignment of factors, including the data revolution: Data-gathering technologies like sensors and wearable devices have been widely collecting physiological data for over a decade. And whereas in previous eras, each researcher or business or organization had its own data, today consortiums are collating reams of data into single sources across hospitals, medical businesses, government agencies, and universities. “If you are a scientist, you can lay your hands on mountains of data that were not there before,” says Dube. And, of course, newly available AI can detect patterns in the data that were previously invisible to researchers. “If only humans are looking, it’s impossible to find some of these insights,” says Dube.

To be sure, healthcare-delivery models aren’t yet where they need to be. Healthcare systems are heavily regulated, and their central function is still to provide care to customers whose health is failing. “We have a very complex, bureaucratic, and difficult operating model,” says Doug Greenberg, North American market leader for healthcare at Korn Ferry. Before the model can change, operational improvements, partially driven by AI advancements, need to be the immediate focus, he says.

With that in mind, healthcare firms are searching widely for executives with real-world experience in new technologies, with the intention of embedding them in their organizations. In the meantime, some healthcare systems are already branding themselves to consumers as hubs of proactive care and preventative medicine. Yet many power brokers and institutions—ranging from insurance companies to governments to consumers—would like to see healthcare costs drop.

The question for healthcare companies is who will own the customer experience. Anyone who has recently used a healthcare tracking app for sleep, exercise, or diet has likely discovered a dashboard for health-related data that goes far beyond these metrics; platforms for clinicians are similarly broad. Thousands of companies are tossing in their hats in the ring, hoping to be ground zero for patient data in the future. The goal is deceptively simple, says Dube. “From the moment a baby is born, they want to tell the baby, ‘When you’re 76, you’re likely to have blood cancer—so you need take these preventative actions when you’re 21.’”

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