Clair Briggs is a project consultant in APCO’s Washington, D.C., health care practice.

A few weeks ago, I attended TEDMED. I was impressed with the speakers and the whole TEDMED experience, but what really struck me was just how interested I was in what was being said. And not just as someone who works in health care communications, but as a regular, curious individual. Many of the talks, topics of which ranged from supercomputers to nematodes to heart disease, not only left me with a solid understanding of their content, but also inspired me to want to go off and learn more about subjects I wouldn’t have necessarily been motivated to learn about on my own beforehand.

Achieving what the TEDMED talks did – inciting a desire to learn more – is something I used as a benchmark of success in my past job as a ninth grade biology teacher. The more engaged my students were in the lesson, the deeper their understanding proved to be on that day’s exit quiz, and the more focused they were in class the day after that. In my current job as a communications professional, the benchmark for success is very similar. Often, the end goal of a good communications campaign is to incite interest in our stakeholders. So what was it about the TEDMED talks that made me want to delve into topics I wouldn’t have thought twice about had they been delivered differently?

As a teacher, I found that engaging my students from the beginning was the key to sparking any sort of investment in learning the material.  For that reason I always started my lessons with something to grab my students’ attention– an interesting fact, a short video, a real-life analogy–before delivering actual content through exploration, a lab or traditional notes. From this perspective, TEDMED nailed it. Each talk started with a hook, followed by short, engaging lectures on difficult and thought-provoking concepts. I sat through one ninety minute session that covered many different topics – all somehow related by one shared theme, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” and the session itself felt like it only lasted 20 minutes.

Of course, starting a lesson with a hook isn’t the only way to engage an audience, nor is it sufficient to engage an audience for a full 90 minutes.  Good lessons, like good TED talks, demand a substantial amount of planning (often more time than the lesson itself), and the most effective ones are a balance: easy to digest yet rigorous, intellectual and stimulating, a mix of activities always aligned to the key message.  The TEDMED talks were on point in this regard, too; at the end of the day I felt that each talk I attended had educated me, challenged me, and motivated me.

I left TEDMED feeling excited about the content covered, and it occurred to me that this experience shouldn’t be limited to elite conferences, but can be a part of the way we communicate challenging health and science issues to any audience—be it ninth graders or stakeholders.

Imagine if all internal communications, patient education materials or presentations leveraged this audience-oriented and thoughtful approach to information-sharing.  Think about the difference this could make to the health care community. What if every doctor was encouraged to find a way – such as a personal anecdote followed by persuasive statistics – to better engage their patients when talking about health issues, like the importance of vaccination or healthy nutrition? With the many changes to healthcare on the horizon, what kind of impact would a series of educational yet entertaining videos about the implementation of the ACA have on the public? I think we’d be surprised at how much more we could accomplish by more purposefully engaging each other and our audiences.

Bill Pierce is a senior director in APCO Worldwide’s Washington, D.C., office. He specializes in advising health care clients; his work includes policy development, issue advocacy, message development, crisis communication and media relations.

Health care is the only product or service we purchase without any idea of the price. Often, you don’t even know your portion of the price.

This raises the question, “Why?” Can anyone imagine going into a restaurant and ordering a meal that had no price listed, or signing a contract to buy a car and then being told the price? It would never happen. But in health care, we not only tolerate such behavior, we are often reticent to even ask about prices.

Steven Brill’s recent article in Time, “Bitter Pill,” focused our attention on these issues and raised specific questions such as: Why are health services and treatments priced as they are? How do health care providers determine prices? And why do different people and organizations get charged vastly different prices? His questions are slowly moving through the collective consciousness of the policy making community, but answers have yet to be offered.

While Brill did not start the discussion, he helped amplify it and give it greater urgency. There are now more calls for greater price transparency to help lower prices and thus cost. Given this broad agreement and heightened awareness, why hasn’t more happened?

According to a recent report by Catalyst for Payment Reform that was featured in The Washington Post, part of the reason we don’t know the price of the health care we receive is that many states have laws on the books that “allow hospitals and other providers to keep costs hidden until they send you the bill.” Imagine what the public response would be if the same laws applied to plumbing services.

But even if we changed all those laws, there remains a more fundamental question: Would knowing prices up front make any difference in our behavior? Would we search for a good deal as we often do in other sectors?

Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt often talks about shopping around for the best price on a colonoscopy. But would most people act like Secretary Leavitt? And what would the critical mass need to be to actually put pressure on prices? And if we did not shop around, or only did to a limited degree, would there be any value to price transparency?

In a piece for The Wonk Blog in The Washington Post, Sarah Kliff looked at the variation in cost for an ankle MRI in the Washington, D.C., region and found a range of $400 to $1861, but no reason for the difference in price. The data she highlighted came from Castlight, a company dedicated to bringing transparency to health care. Castlight’s CEO Gio Colella is passionate about the value of cost transparency (and quality transparency) and while he cited one example of how transparency did bring down costs, he also admitted that for some hospitals, price transparency will not move them to reduce costs. He quotes the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic as saying they won’t reduce prices due to transparency, but instead will compete on quality (the underlying message is the Cleveland Clinic believes their prices are worth the cost).

In The Atlantic, Peter Ubel raises an interesting and somewhat troubling question – could price transparency actually increase costs? He examines how, while in the traditional consumer market people do price shop and such shopping has had an impact on lowering prices, in health care the idea of best price may not have the same impact.

First, the two markets do not function the same. As health care consumers, most of us do not pay full price. We pay some share of it as negotiated by our health insurer, so we have little motivation to shop around. Second, cost and quality are not always seen as independent of each other but rather they go hand-in-hand (especially when we know little about actual quality). Sometimes we think an expensive item is by virtue of its price better (i.e. expensive wine, expensive cars). Health care definitely falls into this category. Who wants to go to the “cheapest” hospital or doctor?

Lastly, when it comes to the discounts that health insurers negotiate, they are considered proprietary and closely held by insurers as they believe divulging them would provide operating intelligence to their competitors. If a hospital knew that the prices they negotiated with insurers would be made public, they may not be willing to give better discounts to one versus another since that would cause the company paying more to demand the lowest price.

Ubel concludes, and many others agree (including Colella), that for price transparency to be effective, it must be accompanied by its twin: transparency on quality measures. But this will take some time. Measures must be easily understood by patients and they must be measures patients will care about. Only in this way can we begin to separate price and quality, which if successful, could help lower costs.

There is one other factor to consider regarding price transparency. While most of the conversation has been about how shopping around for the best price/value could help lower prices, the jury is still out on whether it would motivate patients to act. However, there is another potentially powerful tool that might work faster – media attention. The Brill piece demonstrates this potential. While not penetrating the broad public consciousness, it has stirred a debate in Washington. And Brill put his article together in an environment where the information is generally not easily accessible. Imagine if such price information was truly public. There would be a Brill story in every state and major city.  Now that could have an impact.

What all this seems to point to is that transparency of any kind is not a quick or simple fix. Done incorrectly, it could lead to higher prices, or at least, not reduce prices. But done correctly, price (and quality) transparency could be very helpful in taming prices and making all of us better consumers of health care.

Most of the discussion about health care reform has centered on the expansion of access to care for people not covered by health insurance. Surprisingly, there has been very little discussion about the delivery of care, which in fact is the root cause of a “sick” health care system that results in uncontrollable spending with limited transparency whether or not money is spent in the best possible way to improve the quality of care. However, outside of the media limelight a massive restructuring of health care delivery is taking place under the banner of what increasingly is being called accountable health care.

Read more, including Stig’s thoughts on the impact accountable care will have on health care delivery and stakeholders, here.

A few months ago the FDA contacted AMARC Enterprises to let them know they were in violation of well, just about everything. (See Letters) Among the many things the FDA mentioned is that the company’s Poly-MVA Facebook page had “liked” a testimonial on someone else’s Facebook page. Being the internet, there was an immediate outcry, followed by an immediate sarcastic rebuttal. Roughly summed up, the conversation was something like:

“Ahhhhh… The FDA hates Facebook, grab your widgets and run for the hills.”

“You’re stupid. Don’t be so stupid.”

The net is that the FDA does in fact consider a “Like” a form of endorsement. I’ve talked with just about every large pharmaceutical company’s medical/regulatory/legal team and guess what? They kind of figured that out already. So nothing really changes. That said, the FDA generally goes after patterns of behavior, and AMARC’s was egregious. The testimonial to which they linked was so far out of bounds that it invited censure. Of course, in its letter, the FDA seemed far more concerned with testimonials on the company website. For instance:

“I want everyone to know that I am now 3 years clear of lung cancer!! When I was told I had a mass in my lung, the first thing I did when I returned home was to call AMARC Enterprises – the PolyMVA people. PolyMVA helped save my life…” [Note: adding the word "helped" doesn't mitigate the unsubstantiated medical claim here.]

There are a few ground rules for Facebook and pharma (at least in the U.S.) that all companies should know:

1. Facebook pages are great if you want to create community and run disease awareness campaigns.
2. Don’t “Like” things you wouldn’t say… If you “like” it, you own it.
3. Facebook requires A LOT of investment from a pharmaceutical company, so don’t do it just because there are a billion people on it.
4. Hire someone who is more interested in you not getting into trouble than making a quick buck.

Clearly, Facebook can be a powerful tool but it isn’t right for every company. The benefits and risks must be fully weighed before opening a corporate account. Companies should seek counsel from qualified firms, like APCO, that can help them navigate the intricacies of the law and all social media communities, not just Facebook.

Everyone has had to wait to see a physician–either for an appointment or in a waiting room where minutes seems like hours and months can feel like years.

Imagine the havoc when an additional 30 to 46 million patients who may now have health coverage are in need of doctors. Add in an aging population and public health emergencies such as pandemics, natural disasters and bioterrorism, and the scenario becomes more catastrophic.

During the healthcare debate, there had been little discussion about supply issues when the focus had predominately been on demand. The American Academy of Family Practice predicts that there may be a shortage of 40,000 family doctors in just 10 years if medical schools continue to graduate only half the needed numbers into primary care. It is estimated that by 2025, we will be short 124,000 doctors.

It is not just the patients who feel frustrated by the physician shortage; doctors feel the strain, too. Doctors who want to finally retire or reduce their hours can’t without leaving a giant hole in their communities. The responsibilities are overwhelming and will continue to escalate. I recall when I was a medical resident seeing a patient who had driven 5 hours while having a heart attack to get to our clinic. This story is not unique.

While Congress has proposed expanding the National Health Service Corps, loan repayment programs and funding 2,000 more residency slots nationwide, there will still not be enough well-trained doctors on the front lines to care for our nation’s medical needs.

We need a “surge” in our medical system and it needs to happen quickly. One potential solution is the development and support of physician re-entry programs. Physician re-entry is defined as returning to professional activity/clinical practice for which one has been trained after an extended period of time away.

Re-entry programs could address shortages in primary care as well as other specialty areas. To address these issues, the Physician Reentry into Workforce project was established in 2006 to develop a national agenda on physician re-entry, building upon the prior work of a Health and Human Services task force I chaired on this issue over a decade ago (Mark, S. Re-entry into clinical practice: challenges and strategies. JAMA, 2002).

The project is a collaboration of over 20 physician membership organizations, regulatory groups and educators. Under the leadership of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, the project has addressed competency assessment, educational, licensing and credentialing requirements along with strategies to encourage physicians to reenter clinical practice.

On June 1, 2012, Representative Sarbanes (D- MD) introduced the Physician Reentry Demonstration Program Act to alleviate the nation’s shortage of physicians based upon the efforts of this workforce project. This act would train reentering physicians, provide a streamlined process for credentialing and continuing medical education, and provide funding to assist them with credentialing fees, loan repayment and salaries. In return for this assistance, physicians must provide a minimum of two years of service at a community health center, Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center or school-based health center.

While it takes years to train new doctors, seasoned clinicians need only a few months to refresh their skills. Although it is important to ensure that new physicians enter medicine, it would be a waste to not utilize the vast talent and rich experience of doctors who have left clinical practice but now wish to return to serve the public. We can’t afford to wait to build the pipeline of new talent. Our lives depend on it.

Bill Pierce is a senior director in APCO Worldwide’s Washington, D.C., office. He specializes in advising health care clients; his work includes policy development, issue advocacy, message development, crisis communication and media relations.

Although the State of the Union Address (SOTU) often marks the beginning of the legislative season in Congress, it seems health care is not following the usual pattern. Due to the vast nature of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the strong and continuing political feelings it created, the debate has never subsided. It has just gone on, but the SOTU does provide an appropriate moment to assess where the country is on the issue of health care.

First, regardless of where you come down on the ACA, it is important to understand that there are trends in the health care marketplace that are underway that were not created by the ACA.  If anything, the ACA capitalized on these trends, trying to encourage and/or accelerate them, and most importantly, they will continue regardless of any modification to the law.

• A drive for a new reimbursement model: There is true bi-partisan agreement that the fee-for-service (FFS) model – the backbone of how we have paid for health care in the U.S. – has reached its natural end. We can no longer afford to pay for primarily quantity, which the FFS model incentivizes. We must now begin to pay for value. What replaces it is still being debated, but ideas include a global payment system, a capitated payment system, the Accountable Care Organization model (ACO) (and its commercial version) or some modified version of any of these.  In addition, FFS will not likely be replaced by any one single model, at least not for a while. Regardless, what is most important is that the day is coming when FFS is no longer the model for how we pay for health care in the U.S. Another key component to understand about the coming change is that nearly everything will be captured, including pharmacy benefits and wellness programs. The only question is how and when.
• Paying for quality: This is what is driving the debate over replacing the FFS model. FFS incentivizes and drives quantity of care. Nearly everyone understands that this model is not delivering the desired quality or outcomes of care, thus the drive to shift how we pay from quantity to quality to deliver more value.
• A greater emphasis on team-based care: Team based models include ACOs, medical homes and community health networks. Another idea that has widespread agreement is to focus on chronic diseases. With 75 percent of our health care costs driven by chronic disease (and many people have multiple chronic diseases), health care providers need to do a better job of managing care. If it is done well, the potential savings are great and the potential improvement in outcomes is even greater.
• An increasing focus on wellness, prevention and quality of life as the measure of health: As we all know well, for decades our health care system really has been a sick care system, meaning people reluctantly see the doctor only when they are sick. In recent years there has been a drive to focus on being well (or as well as you can be whatever your condition). This trend will continue, particularly with the increase in workplace wellness programs.

Although the ACA did not create these trends, it is designed to encourage them and propel them forward.

• CMS Innovation Center which is testing ideas such as Bundled Payments, ACOs and Value-Based Purchasing;
• The private sector seeing the emphasis on innovation is also moving ahead with its version of  ACO-like models of care, as well as experiments in new methods of reimbursement;
• Expansion of prevention benefits under the ACA;
• Codifies existing law that allows employers/worksite wellness programs to differentiate premiums based on certain health status factors (BMI, tobacco cessation, cholesterol, blood pressure).

So what about the politics of health care?

With President Obama’s reelection, repeal of the ACA is not an option. However, this does not mean there will not be continued talk of repeal, especially from the most conservative elements of the Republican Party (Rep. Michelle Bachman, R-MN; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX).

One of the most important political issues regarding the implementation of the ACA is the ongoing fiscal/budget fight. Right now, Congress is lurching from one fiscal deadline to the next with no end in sight. The potential impact for the ACA is whether any changes or reductions in funding will be made as part of any long- or short-term deal.

In addition to possible changes based on a fiscal deal, expect a continued small-steps strategy to dismantle parts of the law. For instance, as part of the “Fiscal Cliff” deal Part 1, the CLASS Act was repealed. The CLASS Act was a long-term care program that suffered from a budget problem – while projected to produce a surplus in the first 10 years, after 10 years the program plummeted into deficit for as far as the eye could see. In addition, a growing bi-partisan and credible effort is emerging to repeal the device tax, which was included in the law to help pay for it.

In addition, the legal challenges that began with the individual mandate, and thus the overall standing of the law, will continue. These challenges have the same goal as the small step legislative strategy – dismantle the law provision by provision. The current challenges fall into a couple areas:

• Challenge the constitutionality of the contraception mandate: So far the results have been mixed. Several injunctions have been granted while several have been disallowed.  The president recently clarified the regulations granting exemptions for more institutions, which may help in the legal challenges, but will not slow down the number or ferocity of the opposition.
• Challenge the legality of exchange subsidy for federal exchanges: Conservatives believe because the law does not explicitly spell out that subsidies can be offered in federal exchanges as it does for state exchanges, they have an opening to topple the law. The IRS has already issued rules covering the state and federal health exchanges.  Oklahoma has sued, but it is unclear who has standing (i.e. what is harm?).
• Challenge the employer mandate: Several lawsuits have been filed, with no results to date.

Health Exchanges

The last and most important issue in the ongoing debate is over the health exchanges, or marketplaces, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has rebranded them. The success of the ACA rides on their success. If they work well, the ACA will be nearly impossible to topple. If they do not work well, and conservatives are doing everything they can think of to stand in the way of their success, then an opening will be provided to make significant changes or even repeal the law.

With the focus on health exchanges the debate has shifted to the states where Republican governors have overwhelmingly rejected the idea of running the exchanges themselves, instead leaving the task to the federal government. Democratic governors have generally taken on the job, but in the end it looks like approximately 30 states will leave the job up to HHS. And while HHS/the federal government has the experience and expertise (they already run the federal employee program, which is an exchange, and more importantly the Medicare Part C and D exchanges), the sheer number may overwhelm them.

Given the short time frame that both the states and federal government have to get the health exchanges up and running, ) a question is lingering on everyone’s mind:  Is there enough time? And if not, given all that is riding on their success, does the president move to delay the implementation of the health exchanges? To note, the key date is not January 1, 2014, but October 1, 2013 when the exchanges are supposed to be open for enrollment. Republicans would love nothing more than a delay as they see it playing right into their hands. Democrats are wary of delay for this reason, but also must weigh that against not delaying and risking poorly performing exchanges that cold sour the public on the law.

Regardless of your opinion on the law and exchanges; they are not a radical idea, as noted, two major exchanges already operate; the federal health care program and the Medicare Part C and D programs.

While fairly simple, they work, and they work well. The problem for the ACA exchanges is their complexity, they are new to the states and they are a much larger enterprise than  the federal government anticipated.

Interestingly, Republicans are not unanimous on the question of who should run the health exchanges. In a piece for the National Review Online, Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum argued that “In fact, federal ‘fallback’ exchanges are the single-payer Trojan horse hidden in ObamaCare. Conservatives must not allow themselves to be outfoxed and overrun.” In addition, Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, writes that “Republicans cannot afford to sit back and assume – or hope – that the exchanges will fail … In addition, ignoring the exchanges will not be without cost for the governors.” He goes on to argue that GOP governors should ban together and create leverage to try and force the Obama administration to provide them the “…flexibility to create workable non-ObamaCare exchanges.”

Congressional Oversight

Although President Obama was reelected, and the Senate remains under Democratic control, the GOP still controls the House and, beyond rhetorical opposition, it can be expected they will hold oversight and investigative hearings including looking at:

• How was/is the taxpayer money being spent;
• The overall cost of the law (the GOP believes, despite OMB and CBO projections, the law will add to the U.S. deficit);
• The effectiveness of the various programs within the law. Is the law working as intended?

The bottom line, the election did not end the health care debate — it just moved it to a new phase.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

These are extraordinarily stressful times for America’s hospitals. Many are treating fewer patients now than they did two years ago and operating at a financial loss; they complain publicly about the financial squeeze they are in between demands for higher pay from doctors and nurses and inadequate reimbursement rates from public and private sector payers. On top of this, hospitals are expected to keep up with a rapidly changing health care system, one which is now beginning to pay hospitals based on quality measures, such as patient satisfaction scores, infection rates and patient outcomes. In short, the reimbursement model is transitioning from one based on the number of procedures performed to one based on outcomes.

To further complicate matters, hospitals will need to be ready by 2014 to handle what could be a surge in newly insured Americans accessing the health care system for the first time. The rapidly changing health care system has fueled consolidation in the hospital sector and a spending spree by some facilities, which are buying physician practices and making doctors employees for the first time as a way to control costs.

While it is understandable that the business of running a hospital is paramount to the CEO and the executive team, our observation is that many of these senior executives are overlooking their reputational needs. By default, most hospitals position themselves as advanced practitioners of modern medicine – they tout their high tech robot and their innovative services. But it’s the people who work inside the hospitals that matter the most to patients. Will the nurses actually spend time with them instead of doing paperwork? Do the doctors check on them throughout the day and make sure all of their questions are answered? Does the patient understand their discharge instructions and know who to turn to if things are not going as planned? These are the quality measures that mean the most to patients.  These also are measures that impact a hospital’s bottom line.

APCO recently released the findings of a major study that identifies four attributes that major corporations need to have in order to become Champion Brands. Hospitals are no different. They need to align their brand with patients’ and the broader public’s expectations. By creating enduring bonds with these stakeholders, hospitals will be able to drive business growth, improve employee loyalty, produce favorable policy outcomes and create a better bottom-line.

Melissa Musiker is a registered dietician and a member of APCO’s Washington, D.C., health policy team.

January 20 – 26 was National Healthy Weight week. Strategically positioned to be right in the middle of the post holidays and  New Year’s resolution use-your-gym-membership season, the premise behind Healthy Weight Week is to remind people concerned about their weight to stop fixating on numbers and focus on building healthy habits and a more positive self-image.

Recognizing the economic difficulties facing society as a result of rising healthcare costs associated with obesity, and the fact that a winning and innovative strategy to address this crisis is needed, Hastings Center bioethicist emeritus Dr. Daniel Callahan, in a recently released controversial paper,  posits three potential solutions to addressing the obesity epidemic: strong and somewhat coercive public health measures, childhood prevention programs and extreme social pressure on the overweight.

Arguing that the first two solutions are impossible without first achieving the third, Dr. Callahan mulls over how to stigmatize obesity in the way we have stigmatized smoking, such that, over time what previously had been considered a bad habit becomes “reprehensible behavior” ideal for regulation and aggressive prevention.

Callahan argues that although it might feel culturally uncomfortable to do so, those who are overweight need to be made acutely and constantly aware that they are overweight and that isn’t ok.

We live in a society where there has long been significant cultural pressure to be thin. Obese young people have poorer educational outcomes known to be due to bias in the classroom. Obese individuals have poorer health outcomes due to the increased burden of disease and the fact that across the medical profession, from students to practicing physicians, there is a reluctance, and at times even hostility, towards treating obese patients.

For married couples, weight can become as much of a relationship stressor as finances, and, when the female partner is overweight, there is even more risk for marital conflict as reported last week by the Wall Street Journal.  Overweight individuals, but most particularly women, face a new kind of glass ceiling — they are less likely to be promoted and more likely to receive lower salaries.

Men need to be visually obese before they face similar discrimination. Case in point, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been described as too fat to be a viable presidential candidate, despite his popularity and an otherwise appropriate resume. By waging a policy war against obesity, experts have noted that increased stigma will be placed on those who are overweight and obese.

So if Dr. Callahan’s theory of change is true and 66 percent of the population who are currently overweight or obese need to be nudged and judged into a state of awareness that their body habitus is problematic at both personal and societal levels and there is clear and convincing evidence that this type of stigma is increasingly institutionalized, then is National Healthy Weight Week aligned with his “modest proposal” or acting against it? I’ll leave the reader to be the judge.

Personalized medicine – the application of genetic information to tailor therapy to individual patients – is frequently touted as one of the biggest current advances in modern medicine. A majority of European stakeholders hope that personalized medicine will reduce medical errors, improve patient outcomes and reduce total health care spending over 15 years. Most physicians in the United States and Europe expect personalized medicine to become routine in their own clinical practice within a few years.

Yet, in spite of the clear potential benefits, the adoption of personalized medicine is happening at a slow pace.

It is widely recognized that there are significant barriers to broader acceptance and adoption of personalized medicine due to lack of research funding, lack of strong evidence in certain, absence of a clear reimbursement system that encompasses both diagnostics and therapeutics and the low level of knowledge among physicians. Even in the field of cancer, where personalized medicine is perceived to be most advanced, only about one-third of all oncologists declare that they are “very familiar” with personalized medicine. Furthermore, many stakeholders expect that the implementation of personalized medicine in daily clinical practice will require significant investments and lead to increased costs short-term before longer-term reductions in health care spending are achieved.

However, while these barriers are real, I believe that the biggest barrier to broader adoption of personalized medicine is a different one: the fact that personalized medicine represents a powerful, disruptive and radical transformation of a health care industry that is by tradition conservative.

Most innovative and disruptive technologies require social change to drive acceptance and adoption. And many hot technologies go through cycles of acceptance and rejection, before there are adopted broadly. Take a look at the iPad, which was launched successfully in 2010 and is one of the most transformational innovations in technology.  The pre-cursor to the iPad was launched in 1987 with Apple’s Newton, which was widely considered flop. However, since 1987, consumers gradually learned the benefits of using handheld and mobile tablet technology for access to data, communication, education and entertainment.

Personalised medicine will likely not be adopted more broadly before industry generates awareness and acceptance among users and consumers. Adoption is based on emotional attachment and personal experience of value – not merely rational and scientific benefits. The implication is therefore that the personalized medicine industry needs to humanize and personalize genomics medicine.

There are several ways to doing that: Firstly, industry should work with patients and physicians to create and tell human and emotionally powerful stories about the life-changing experience that patients go through utilizing genetic tests and targeted therapies. Secondly, industry has the opportunity to develop and communicate tangible visions of a new personalized health care system that leverages personal health technologies in connection with genomics medicine to engage patients/consumers more directly in the prevention of disease, disease interception and intervention before disease becomes serious. The personalized medicine industry has the opportunity to partner with patient and disease organizations to highlight the vision for a new health paradigm that will improve health outcomes and reduce costs of health care longer-term.

The impact of such a new health model transcends the health care sector. As the Irish government has stated in its new “Research Prioritisation Report,” biopharmaceutical innovation, including personalized medicine/diagnostics and biomarkers, has the potential to enhance commercial business opportunities, drive economic growth and create jobs. These are very important benefits in the current economic environment.

Personalized medicine has huge potential for transforming health care and society, but an innovative and transformational communication strategy is needed for this disruptive and game-changing new technology to be more widely accepted and adopted.

For more information, check my presentation at the webinar of the European Personalised Medicine Association (EPEMED).

Watch highlights from the discussion below and read more about our event and the conversation that took place via this blog post.