Disruptive innovation: first-person experts and quantum computing

My son Lucas is a researcher in a team working on quantum physics. They published today a paper in Nature, describing an experiment carried out by Google laboratories, showing some significant advances in the field of quantum computers: a new machine with nine qubits and 1,000 quantum logic gates (Barends, R. et al). http://www.nature.com/news/google-moves-closer-to-a-universal-quantum-computer-1.20032

“Whereas digital computers represent data as “ones” and “zeroes” -binary digits known as bits-, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits that are both one and zero at the same time. This enables them to each carry out two calculations at once. The number of calculations that quantum computers can run rises exponentially with the number of qubits they have”. Thus, enormous possibilities to solve very complex problems are created (Charles Q. Choi, 2016). https://www.insidescience.org/content/googles-new-quantum-computer-may-be-best-both-worlds/4036

It is very difficult to scale up quantum computers, and it will be very complicated to build an efficient quantum computer, but if and when that happens, and when they are scattered as they have been classical computers, the impact will be tremendous. A similar phenomenon is creating disruptive innovation in the health sector. Let’s see how.

Disruptive innovation in health care is “a type of innovation that creates new networks and new organisations based on a new set of values, involving new players, which makes it possible to health improve outcomes and other valuable goals, such as equity and efficiency. This innovation displaces older systems and ways of doing things”… “Probably the most disruptive innovation in health care in the past 10 years is the change of the position of the patient from a rather passive actor –undergoing procedures and trying to comply with therapeutic regimens- towards an active participant –formulating goals, monitoring indicators, contributing to his/her care-plan” (EXPH February 2016) http://ec.europa.eu/health/expert_panel/opinions/docs/012_disruptive_innovation_en.pdf

Increasingly, patients (especially with chronic conditions) are defined themselves as experts in first person. They are certainly experts on lived experience, content experts. So, we can say that they are both “customers” and “suppliers” at the same time. They are “consumers”, “clients”, “patients” with problems to be solved by experts and institutions that provide health care services, and they are also “experts”, health agents, with knowledge and capacity to self-manage and solve their problems in collaboration with professional experts, actively participating in the recovery process.

A person with a mobile phone, internet, adequate training and connected to an appropriate organisation of health services ("business model"), will be part of a new "value network" including doctors, nurses, specialised centres, social resources, statistics, big-data, diagnostic devices, medicines, etc., enabling her/him to manage their health problems in a more effective and efficient way than before. We are now at the beginning of this new era.