Hm, this is an interesting blueprint for building an investable regulatory pathway. But it treats healthcare as a billing system to be optimized, as opposed to a scientific domain to be transformed. Frontier AI will reshape diagnosis, prevention, and our models of disease more than it will reshape medical billing codes. The real healthcare revolution will not come from anything in this piece, but from rethinking biology.
I lived in Turkey from 2020-2024, and was very impressed by their digital health system.
My wife can open her e-devlet ("e-state") app and see the exact results of a lab test from over 15 years ago (measurements of dozens of variables). When she got imaging done, everything just works for her other doctors to see it, with no thought of "in-network" or any kind of system.
Someone who worked at the US Embassy in Ankara told me, "this is why Erdoğan won" when talking about it.
There certainly is a trade-off of privacy. And the notion of a permanent record can be a bit scary - there are many real examples where it can make people rightfully feel nervous. One of my wife's peers had his pilot career derailed because of a test result from years before. But when the data is needed, especially in an emergency situation, it is at least there and accessible by doctors.
Great article — and the point at the end about artificial constraints on expanding care delivery is critical. These barriers are exactly what keep healthcare costs high. This is fundamentally a business-model challenge, not a technology challenge.
The resistance is often framed as concern over safety or regulation, and it shows up through laws, licensing limits, and reimbursement restrictions. But the underlying dynamic is consistent: the same groups that restrict physician supply will view AI — and its productivity unlock — as a threat. Increased efficiency is deflationary to healthcare costs and therefore to their income, creating strong incentives to slow or block it.
Perhaps productivity gains could eventually allow incomes to hold steady, but with tightly limited physician supply, there’s no competitive pressure forcing that evolution. We’re starting to see cracks in the model (cash-pay markets, etc.), but the real unlock would be dramatically increasing the number of physicians. With more supply, new reimbursement models could emerge and productivity valued.
85+% of all health issues are chronic, and are poorly dealt with thru the current health systems (including many doctors). The solution lies primarily outside healthcare and in the realm of wellthcare. That solution is AI needy, and a much larger ITAM than the nicely written article above.
Hm, this is an interesting blueprint for building an investable regulatory pathway. But it treats healthcare as a billing system to be optimized, as opposed to a scientific domain to be transformed. Frontier AI will reshape diagnosis, prevention, and our models of disease more than it will reshape medical billing codes. The real healthcare revolution will not come from anything in this piece, but from rethinking biology.
I lived in Turkey from 2020-2024, and was very impressed by their digital health system.
My wife can open her e-devlet ("e-state") app and see the exact results of a lab test from over 15 years ago (measurements of dozens of variables). When she got imaging done, everything just works for her other doctors to see it, with no thought of "in-network" or any kind of system.
Someone who worked at the US Embassy in Ankara told me, "this is why Erdoğan won" when talking about it.
There certainly is a trade-off of privacy. And the notion of a permanent record can be a bit scary - there are many real examples where it can make people rightfully feel nervous. One of my wife's peers had his pilot career derailed because of a test result from years before. But when the data is needed, especially in an emergency situation, it is at least there and accessible by doctors.
Great article — and the point at the end about artificial constraints on expanding care delivery is critical. These barriers are exactly what keep healthcare costs high. This is fundamentally a business-model challenge, not a technology challenge.
The resistance is often framed as concern over safety or regulation, and it shows up through laws, licensing limits, and reimbursement restrictions. But the underlying dynamic is consistent: the same groups that restrict physician supply will view AI — and its productivity unlock — as a threat. Increased efficiency is deflationary to healthcare costs and therefore to their income, creating strong incentives to slow or block it.
Perhaps productivity gains could eventually allow incomes to hold steady, but with tightly limited physician supply, there’s no competitive pressure forcing that evolution. We’re starting to see cracks in the model (cash-pay markets, etc.), but the real unlock would be dramatically increasing the number of physicians. With more supply, new reimbursement models could emerge and productivity valued.
85+% of all health issues are chronic, and are poorly dealt with thru the current health systems (including many doctors). The solution lies primarily outside healthcare and in the realm of wellthcare. That solution is AI needy, and a much larger ITAM than the nicely written article above.
Typo: but if it relates to doctoring it’s healthcare AI our book. (Should be "in our book")