Why is there resistance to technological advances in healthcare?

Technology must prove it will improve care and reduce costs before it will be accepted in healthcare, says HealthMaker John Lach, PhD, chair of computer and electrical engineering at the University of Virginia. In this video, he discusses this issue.

Transcript

00:00

We first need to demonstrate that this really is going to improve care. And it really is going to lower health care costs before insurance companies will think about reimbursing doctors

00:09

for some of these expenses. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:17

Part of it is the way that things have always been done. I mean, if you think about what all of medical training

00:25

is involved, I mean, it's a very structured process for how people are educated for how to practice medicine.

00:31

And so breaking away from that isn't always easy.

00:37

And then there are issues related to the medical infrastructure. So who's going to pay for these things, thinking about it from a payer perspective?

00:46

We first need to demonstrate that this really is going to improve care and really is going to lower health care costs before insurance companies will

00:54

think about reimbursing doctors for some of these expenses. So there are just some practical issues like that

01:01

that I think for any system that's as large as the American health-care system has that much inertia that it'll just take some time

01:10

to make some changes. But something that I think is really important and that I always emphasize is that we're not

01:17

going to convince everybody with a whole lot of hype, and marketing brochures, and qualitative claims of capabilities.

01:26

It's going to have to be something that we demonstrate with evidence and using the good-old scientific method