Millennials and Delivery Innovation

TAKEAWAY: MILLENNIALS AND DELIVERY INNOVATION

NOSEWORTHY:
I think what’s really going to unleash the innovation in health care delivery is getting the young people involved—the consumers, but especially the young, the digital generation, because they’re not used to paying for anything ever. They’re not, right? You all know this. And they’re used to getting what? Accurate answers, data-driven answers. It’s not all truth on their phones, but they’re able to get answers immediately. There’s absolutely no reason that that can’t take off. We’ve been working on this now at Mayo for at least the last nine years. How do we reach the rest of the world by putting answers to real problems, curated answers for patients, immediately available wherever they are?

That’s where the disruption’s coming. You’re seeing, of course, with the various large groups coming together—most recently the Amazon/JPMorgan Chase/Berkshire Hathaway thing—to try to bring technology, logistics, capital, transparency, and new models. That’ll be driven by the young people. Folks my age want to go to the doctor—not want to go to the doctor’s office, but they want to see the doctor or the nurse, right? But under whatever age it is, why would I ever go there? Why would I ever go and wait in a roomful of people that are coughing and sneezing and the doctor’s two hours late? Why would I do that? Yet try to convince my generation to change to that has been really hard.

So, it’s going to happen. And it’ll happen, I think, really fast when the power shifts just a little bit more to the consumer, and that’ll be a good thing. I think that’ll be—will it be perfect? No. Will we stumble around? Of course. But ultimately there’s no reason for medical knowledge and scientific breakthroughs to be mysterious to patients or unavailable. Access is everything.