Why Big Tech struggles to disrupt healthcare

Many Big Tech players have tried to “disrupt” healthcare over the years:Google tried to build a personal health record (later shut down)Microsoft also tried to build a personal health record (also later shut down)IBM Watson tried to build AI-powered clinical decision-making tools (later sold off parts of the business)Amazon teamed up with JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway and tried to . . . I really don’t know (and that shut down). Although, to give them credit, Amazon’s come the closest with Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy and other initiatives still in place.You can have all the resources in the world—billions of dollars, the brightest technology minds—and still struggle to build a solution that achieves adoption by patients and providers and meaningfully improves health outcomes.Because it’s not 1% idea + 99% execution as you’d expect in most tech companies.It’s 10 times harder in healthcare . . . it’s 0.1% idea + 99.9% execution.This is why you see so many tech companies re-inventing the wheel in healthcare:“How has nobody built X tech product before?”Until the innovator realizes it’s 10 times harder because it wasn’t the tech that was the biggest barrier. Most likely someone had built it before . . . but they couldn’t figure out everything else beyond the tech.Read: Dr. Joshua Liu: 3 unpopular opinions about digital healthWhat this underlines is that in health tech:Technology is necessary but not sufficient. People and process often matter moreWe can’t “technology” our way out of the biggest challenges in healthcare.The companies that win will be those that choose to:Embed evidence-based clinical content, workflows and approaches into the technologyDeeply understand day to day clinical workflows and needs of patients/providersBuild within the current reality of reimbursement models and economic incentives (while still advocating for a better future)Be co-drivers (not passengers) for building more and more clinical evidence.I don’t know if most technologists have the patience, resilience and stomach to invest beyond the tech to make it work.You probably won’t be able to build the next trillion dollar company in healthcare—at least if your focus is on helping providers care for patients.And if you’re a Big Tech company, building in healthcare certainly won’t move their bottom line as trillion dollar market cap companies.So why would they care?If it’s gotta be 0.1% idea and 99.9% execution . . . then you gotta be a little crazy and incredibly resilient to do it. Hats off to the crazies.Dr. Joshua Liu is a Toronto physician and the co-founder/CEO of SeamlessMD. This item originally appeared on LinkedIN.

Why Big Tech struggles to disrupt healthcare

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