Blue Ocean Strategy: US Healthcare Management

I live in the US and have my whole life. I've traveled around the world, visiting and living in many other countries and found the spirit of people in the US to be different than anywhere else. This is especially true for entrepreneurship: Americans -- both native-born and immigrants -- love to build businesses and invent things.

But the US also has some problem areas. One, in particular, is our health care system: it's a mess. A large number of people have no type of medical insurance. Explaining for my foreign readers: the uninsured don't have emergency coverage -- they have nothing; they're expected to pay their own bills entirely. Even those who have coverage oftentimes have lousy coverage that can be canceled for virtually any reason if a person ever becomes sick. Some people (including many millions of children) can't afford coverage, others are sick and can't buy it no matter how much they're willing to pay, and a third group just refuse to pay for it.

Part of this problem is purely political. From a conservative vantage point it's easy to criticize our legal system and the mayhem large lawsuits against doctors and medical providers and technology (drug and device) companies unleash. From a liberal vantage point everybody understands the classic economic Commons problem: the incentive for medical insurance companies to cherry-pick only the healthy for coverage.

But I strongly believe the application of Blue Ocean Strategy to technology -- especially information management -- can play a large part in solving the well documented problems of the US health system. The same technology can probably also improve health-care in those countries that have fewer problems.

Specifically, I'd say let's use information sharing to eliminate administrative overhead, pandering to hypochondriacs, and questionable remedies from the system. Let's reduce unnecessary tests: medical procedures designed for legal defenses, as well as sky-high compensation for many in the health-care business. Let's raise the availability of access to non-doctor professionals and self-help material to encourage people to seek alternative, lower-cost methods to treat themselves. Finally, let's create information sharing systems that quickly and efficiently diagnose and treat genuine ailments.

Businesses are thinking along these lines: Microsoft and Google both have medical records systems they're in the process of launching. Both have merit though I'm not sure either is different enough to make much of a dent: I admittedly haven't done an in-depth study but both initiatives look like red ocean thinking. I have my own ideas about what would work, but I'm working with a startup in stealth mode so no public sharing ... yet.

In any event, bringing the Value Innovation component of Blue Ocean Strategy to health care -- enabling lower cost and higher value -- is long overdue.