Last week I attended a fantastic talk at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, a leading Australian research centre - if you’re not aware, Australia punches above it’s weight in medical research.

The talk focused on genomics and the future of personalized healthcare.

In closing comments discussing the challenges facing GPs in Australia and other parts of the world, James Tynan, a VC at Square Peg, mentioned there had yet to be a company which experienced huge success in preventative care.

As it was the end of the talk, I didn’t feel it was the right time to rebut his statement, though in hindsight, I should have.

I’ve come to realize I have strong feelings about the perspectives given on the panel towards the end of the conversation relating to preventative care, and making preventative care a priority for clinicians.

Many people envision a future of medicine where the doctor focuses on keep patients healthy rather than answering the call only after the patient is ill.

At the same time we all recognize health care systems around the world are overloaded, many doctors aren’t given enough time to properly understand the patients needs, and are doing the best they can with the information they are given.

Our consumer devices are also providing more data than every before and even more data will be available at lower cost in the near future.

The idea that we can take this greater volume of data, and push more of those needs onto an already struggling medical system so they can focus on preventative care, I believe to be wrong approach.

In this post I’ll discuss my perspective of what success looks like in preventative care, and what I believe can drive better health in the future, allowing doctors to move up the value chain and focus on treating illness rather than preventative care. I recognize this is contrarian to the accepted view of preventative care as the future of healthcare.

Preventative care as aspirational lifestyle

As I see it, Nike has done more to improve the health of millions of people than any medical or health focused company.

Of course, most people don’t consider Nike a preventative care company. However, we all recognize that they don’t sell shoes, they sell a lifestyle. They challenge people to be more active and push themselves to be athletic. At Nike, everyone is an athlete.

I suspect Nike’s lifestyle marketing has done more in getting people fit than any recommendations from doctors. Also notable is that Nike never says “recommended by doctors”, they focus on the aspirational benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

In the fitness market, there are many other successes that we can point to as driving health benefits, such as Lululemon, and we can’t ignore that Apple and other tech companies are getting into the market by giving users information about their health that were only accessible with a doctor previously.

A shortage of doctors, but trying to get them to do more?

But the discussion on the panel was pointing out the role of doctors in keeping patients healthy, and the challenges countries are facing in keeping the population healthy, promoting preventative health, and managing healthcare costs.

It is my belief that we need to step away from the idea that it is a doctors responsibility to provide our preventative care, and move doctors up the chain focusing on what they are best at, which is curing diseases.

I don’t need a doctor to tell me to be active or eat a healthy diet, and if I don’t know what a healthy diet is, or how to be active, is it the best use of a doctors time to teach me?

We don’t get our workouts from doctors. We don’t get our diet from doctors.

We are nearing an inflection point with our digitals tools in that they are already monitoring our lifestyle and can make recommendations and promote our healthy wellbeing.

Diet is still an outlier here, as it continues to be a challenge to monitor dietary intake, however, blood glucose can now be measured non-invasively, and other tools which are focused on the impact of our diet, rather than the diet itself will be coming in the future.

The discussion of genetics on the panel is a great example of how I see the future of our health going. Today the cost to do a genetic test with a service such as Eugene is $700 AUD ($450 USD). That cost is going to drop, and the computational capabilities to find value from the data is going to increase.

What happens in a world where vital data from blood is free, because it is measured by your watch, or other device, and genetic data comes down to $100.

A test looking for risks in your genetic profile means doctors can focus on issues which may be impacting your health.

This doesn’t take the doctor out of the loop, it lets them create more value.

I believe we can draw a parallel to the current change in car repair. You used to have to get an oil change and a “check-up” on your car. As we move to electrification we not only have less maintenance, but the car monitors itself the majority of the time.

As a personal anecdote, if I were to get my cholesterol checked by a doctor here in Australia, it would cost me $15 for the doctors visit, $100 for the blood test, and $15 for a repeat visit to get the results. That’s $130 if I wanted to check my cholesterol once a year. I bought a home cholesterol unit for $70. It is a lower cost for me to do this myself, faster, and I can do it every month instead of once a year or less.

Disrupting healthcare means we have to break from the current model

Let’s face it, we are currently responsible for our own health, and we are backed up by a health system that is struggling under the load. Why do we think adding more preventative care to the practitioners is going to magically fix the system?

We will still get sick. Preventative care will change how we get sick, and reduce the incidence of preventable health issues, but that doesn’t mean we should place the load on an already struggling system.

We can own our responsibility for our health, and lean on the health system to help fix us when we’re broken. We help the health system to provide the most value, and we live better lives taking care of our own health.

Where does sleep fit in to this model?

This is important to SoundMind in the sleep space for two reasons. First off, most people don’t talk to their doctors about sleep, and even if they did, most doctors would recommend sleeping pills, assuming the problem is the person is not getting enough sleep.

Our sleep is vitally important to our health, but would you expect to show your doctor your sleep data and have them make recommendations?

At SoundMind, we’re focused on improving how your brain functions during sleep, and ensuring you get the most out of the sleep you have available to you.

Our deep sleep enhancement has been shown to increase immune function, mood, nervous system response and more.

Though we’d love to see doctors recommending SoundMind to their patients, and we have some upcoming research which will likely make this a reality for a specific patient group, we believe that just like Nike in the fitness world, it is our responsibility to provide a product and lifestyle that you would want to use and be a part of, if a doctor tells you to our not.