Jason Hwang

Featured Keynote Programs

When we think of “quality” health care, we generally assume that more expertise is always preferred -- doctors must be better than nurses, specialists must be better than primary care doctors, and hospitals and clinics must be better than virtual interactions. This mentality, in part, has left us with a health care system that is unaffordable, inconvenient and largely broken. But if we were to apply the principles of disruptive innovation to our collapsing health care system—by using advances in technology to help nurses and primary care physicians to do more sophisticated work—a costly, hard-to-schedule trip to the doctor may become increasingly rare. Disruptive innovations like direct-to-consumer diagnostics, patient-controlled electronic health records, telemedicine, and hospital-at-home models of care have the potential to create transformative change in the health care industry, argues physician Jason Hwang. Such models of care also have the potential to be superior options with distinct advantages for paving the way toward more accessible, affordable and quality health care.

Anointed as the disruptive model for care delivery when they first entered the marketplace, retail clinics have fallen significantly short of both their promise and potential. In fact, says Jason Hwang, they surprisingly did not follow the path of true disruption. Most disruptions start by serving the low end of consumers, but retail clinics tend to attract people who already have insurance and access to care. The retail clinic model has become one of convenience rather than one of need, missing an important opportunity to serve the poor and underinsured. To thrive and move beyond their current plateau, retail clinics must figure out how to self-disrupt, says Hwang – and he believes a combination of technology and nurses may be a big part of the solution. He discusses his views on how retails clinics can capitalize on mobile health technology and rely more on the expertise of nurses to further push the boundaries of where and to whom retail clinics deliver care, expanding their menu of services while providing quality care to those who need it most.

Most health care takes place inside brick-and-mortar walls. Physician-patient visits are largely unstructured, 15-minute "conversations" with little engagement - highly variable experiences with highly variable outcomes that are also neither scalable nor efficient in an era of rising costs and workforce shortages. The advent of telemedicine brought high expectations of disruption, but physicians continue to adhere to the same care delivery model - just on a video screen. A new model of telemedicine offers the best potential to introduce enormous efficiency, standardizing workflows and care processes, and provide care that is not just affordable and convenient, but also high in quality and scalable.

Dr. Jason Hwang is a pioneer of this next generation of telemedicine. He delves deep into the automated, software-based framework, and discusses proven outcomes, drawn from his own experiences. He also shares his vision for the future of telemedicine in which new models of care will arise in often unexpected ways, as new caregivers and care sites enabled by the digital tools that are being developed today.

When health care professionals speak of reforming health care, they often cite solutions that merely preserve or reinforce the existing model of care delivery, such as tort reform, new payment codes and an expanded pool of doctors. But physician Jason Hwang argues that health care reform starts with changing its longstanding business model, an antiquated one-size-fits-all delivery system that struggles to do everything for everyone. For true health care reform, Hwang says, we need to deploy distinct business models that focus on different aspects of care. Under a “solution shop” model, care is organized around intuitive diagnostic activities and complex, multidisciplinary cases. In contrast, a "value-adding process" business model is organized around well-established and highly-predictable routines, such as joint replacement or endoscopy, and the entire business - even the facilities, training, and pricing - revolve around performing that one procedure perfectly time after time. By reinventing the traditional health care business model, says Hwang, we will no longer have to rely on a system that wants to be all things to all people.

Our population is living longer. There continues to be a shortage of nurses and primary care doctors. Provisions of the Affordable Care Act -- guaranteed issue and mandated coverage of many preventative services – have taken effect. The demand for affordable, quality health care is growing, and there is no way to fulfill it through existing models of care where every problem requires you to see a doctor, in person. Jason Hwang believes highly scalable digital health technologies are poised to vastly improve health care – for everyone. Drawing from experiences with his own telehealth start-up PolkaDoc, as well as his work with the X-PRIZE Foundation, Hwang talks about technology’s sophisticated yet affordable solutions that already exist – from ultrasounds and EKGs to diagnosing of ear infections or rashes, all via smartphones – and discusses the potential that simple digital innovations like text messaging, avatars and apps have for helping patients get better care, earlier and more efficiently. The value of digital health to transform health care is tremendous.