Like many, I am convinced healthcare is undergoing a historic shift from the traditional approach of diagnose and treat to a new digital approach of predict and prevent. Recently, I warned hospital leaders that they need to think about more than just cutting costs and adjusting their operations to respond to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I also identified four innovations I think will transform the clinical delivery of U.S. healthcare: personalized medicine, "quantified self" movement, healthcare smartphone applications and artificial intelligence.
Today I want to make your life as a hospital executive even more complicated: I want to warn you that picking the right technological innovation to adopt and timing your organization's investment in that technology is tricky business. We human beings have a tendency to underestimate the long-term effect of disruptive technology, while at the same time overestimating how quickly innovations will change our industry.