Our podcast, The Next Big Thing in Health, explores the new, big ideas that will help make health care more affordable, more available, and more effective. Over the last few years, we’ve heard dozens of takes from experts throughout the health ecosystem on what the future holds.
And the answers, unsurprisingly, vary. But as guest Amanda Goltz of Amazon said, “If we all agreed on what the next big thing is — and we still weren’t doing it, that would be a problem.”
We’ve curated a list of this year’s top predictions for the “next big thing” into an impactful read below.
Making Trust a Non-Negotiable in Care
Dr. Jan Berger, President and CEO, Health Intelligence Partners | 10/4/22
“I want to trust a health care system that can answer this question: that I can get care, when I need care, from somebody I can trust. I think the next great thing is going to be care delivery in the future. And the where, who, the what, and the why. And we are seeing this in care at home, we are seeing this in community workers being care givers, all kinds of things — so I think it is going to be the care issue. I really do. Other countries have struggled with this and overcome it in some ways. And I think it is both the exciting opportunity and the challenge that we have as roles change within health care.”
The Power of Vegetables
Dr. Sachin Jain, President and CEO, SCAN Group and Health Plan | 9/20/22
“I moved to California eight years ago and I’ve just seen the popularity of vegetarian-only restaurants go up. I’ve been tracking it trying to understand the trend more, and it turns out that in a number of communities the church is actually preaching to people that they shouldn’t eat as much meat because it’s bad for their health.”
Starting with Seamless, Value-Based Care
Dr. David E. Mino, Senior Medical Director, Cigna Healthcare and National Medical Director of Orthopaedic Surgery and Spinal Disorders, Cigna | 9/8/22
“The expansion of value-based care [that is] truly fully integrated, coordinated, and seamless, across the entire patient journey, not just when they need surgery, but when they first present with symptoms of back pain, or hip or knee arthritis is critical.”
Striving for Patient-Centered, Equitable Care
Dr. Douglas Metz, Executive Vice President and Chief Health Services Officer, American Specialty Health | 9/8/22
“The next big thing in health is to get right what has always been the big thing in health. Which is patient-centered deployment of services that is equitable, cost-efficient, and clinically effective... Whether it’s a health plan bringing best-in-class benefits, or if it’s providers bringing best-in-class evidence-based services, that patient-centered equitable care is what we strive for.”
Committing to Meaningful Change on Health Equity
Hilary Marden-Resnik, President and CEO, UCare | 7/26/22
“The next big thing in health from our perspective at UCare is to truly move the dial on health disparities. This has always been a focus of UCare as I mentioned, but we know we can do more and we need to do more. We all have a long way to go to undo centuries of structural racism and disparities in health care and we all need to do better to understand the conditions that produce these health and racial disparities and then to start changing them.”
Helping All People Age Magnificently
Joel Theisen, CEO and Founder, Lifespark | 7/26/22
“We want to help people age magnificently, all of them — all people, all seniors, all products… The next big thing is for providers and payers to be bold and to build out truly unique new systems of excellence for these populations to be served across all cohorts, across all disparities.”
Coordinating Care
Catherine Macpherson, Senior Vice President, Healthcare Strategy and Development and Chief Nutrition Officer, Mom’s Meals | 6/14/22
“Instead of a new product or new offering, what I see as the next big thing is coordination of care… As we continue to move down the path of more value-based contracting, more delegation to providers, thinking about food and other SDOH related benefits like transportation… it would be really wonderful if providers knew about and were able to leverage some of the fantastic supplemental benefits offered by Medicare Advantage and Medicaid MCOs today, like home-delivered meals.”
A Transformative Innovation Pipeline
Chronis Manolis, Senior Vice President, Pharmacy and Chief Pharmacy Officer, UPMC Health Plan | 6/7/22
“We are about to enter the world of the transformative pipeline. If you think about the fact that we were able to get a [COVID-19] vaccine in record time, you get a glimpse into the technology that is out there and the innovation that is about to hit us. We will also start to see things like gene therapy, CART T, and who knows what soon-to-be-discovered technologies that are just going to place a huge burden on the pharmacy affordability equation… We need to be ready if these therapies come down to more mainstream conditions like cholesterol and diabetes, and things like that, now you’re talking about large populations at large prices.”
Increased Reliance on Patient Perception Data
Amanda Goltz, US Healthcare Lead, Worldwide Public Sector Healthcare Venture Capital and Startups, Amazon Web Services | 4/5/22
“The next big thing is related to the emphasis on the data of what happened. We’ve been talking about patient engagement and patient experience for a really long time, but those are still outgrowths of what was done to the patient. Building up evidence bases of data on what actually happened and how people felt about their care, and if they perceive that they got better versus they lived or they died, which is the mortality end point, or if it was a successful surgery or it wasn’t, which is the doctor’s end point, or they stopped generating claims, which is the payers end point — but rather the patient’s end point, which is ‘I’m glad I got that intervention, I’m glad I took that med, I’m glad I saw that doctor, I’m glad I talked to my therapist. I would pay for it again.’ I think that data is going to start to get used in financial arrangements and I’m tremendously excited about that.”
Redefining Primary Care
Kim LaFontana, Senior Vice President, Strategic Growth, Teladoc Health | 3/30/22
“Being able to actually deliver primary care as intended. And to interact with humans on a day-to-day business in a way that makes sense to them and help them meet their needs. We’ve been living under the construct of the system we’ve lived in for so long that we are all kind of used to the 10 minutes a year in an exam room with a doctor. But that’s not what primary care really should be.”
Making Innovations Affordable and Accessible
David Holmberg, President and CEO, Highmark Health and Board Chair, AHIP | 1/19/22
“Whenever you have a trend, and the pandemic is a trend, there are always things that come out of it, both good and bad. And I think the good that’s going to come out of it is that we are going to see a real acceleration of some innovation in how care is delivered as well as the kinds of care. The next big thing is going to be ‘how do we bring those to market and make them affordable?’ That is going to be, I think, a real challenge because we are going to see a lot of customized medicine. That’s the kind of work that we are doing within our own organization. We are looking to find ways to provide individual care – but to do it for the masses. And that will be the real opportunity, and the real challenge.”