4. Privacy and cyber security
There is so much data being collected today about us that it’s easy to get complacent about its availability working against our best interests.
Corah cites the legal wrangling surrounding 23andMe. It has long been a fundamental tenet of obtaining health insurance that all pre-existing conditions be revealed to an insurer. Should this be extended to a person’s genetic code if it points to a high likelihood of cancer or other diseases? Could people with an unlucky genetic code be unable to obtain health insurance?
“That is still a very grey area,” Corah says.
Digital medical records promise a lot of advantages, such as the ability to visit any doctor and have him or her pull up your relevant medical history. But information can get into the wrong hands.
Corah imagines hackers obtaining genetic records, and then demanding money on the threat of making them available online for insurers to access. More concerning still is the possibility that genetic editing technology becomes cheap and accessible enough that people could use it to create diseases resistant to available treatments.
Staying ahead of the curve
As the pace of technological change increases, the near future will be full of devices, techniques and concepts that will be driven by the mega-trends of AI, personalisation, prevention and privacy – and other innovations that will emerge in the coming years.
NAB is working with Growth Mantra to keep organisations at the forefront of these trends.
John McCarthy, Head of Corporate Health at NAB Health, says organisations face a constant race to stay relevant.
“Technology is becoming an ever-larger part of our daily lives and health care industry organisations need to be across how their businesses could be disrupted,” McCarthy says.
“If prevention is the best cure in medicine, then the analogy for health businesses today is that knowledge is power, and there’s great opportunity for organisations and practitioners alike to learn as much as they can now about the mega-trends set to shape tomorrow’s health environment.”