Why did you come to this summit?
What about this attracted you?
Well the World Economic Forum
in so many things is clearly influential
in shaping the way we attempt
to address global problems,
healthcare is one of the biggest
and mobile health
in particular now has the opportunity
not only to transform
the way we practice medicine
in the United States
and other developed countries
but it is a remarkable tool
for starting to redress
the big difference
in healthcare that people in the
developing nations don’t have access to.
 and did you have any set of
expectations you were hoping
to see at this particular summit?
I think any time you have a chance
to come to a meeting
where a lot of people thinking deeply
about problems you always learn.
I think that’s the highest compliment you
can give to any person or to a meeting
and this meeting has fulfilled
that expectation,
a lot of very bright, smart people
thinking about complex problems.
and looking at these complex
problems in mobile health,
are there some new takeaways,
are there some new things that came
out that they're making you rethink?
I don’t think there are any profound
conceptual or technological changes
but there's always a subtlety
each time you get exposed
to different people who are dealing
with the different problems.
For example a very elegant example
of how do people
in developing countries ensure
the medicine they're buying is authentic
because counterfeit medicines
are a big problem in the third world
and the ability to use your mobile phone
just to send in a code number
to find out whether the medicine
is authentic is a great innovation.
Particularly in some nations,
as much as one-third
of all the medicines are fraudulent
and when you're dealing with diseases
like malaria, that’s a tragedy.
In the last section one of the questions
that came out was
is there anything we’re not talking about
that we should be as part of…
Is there anything that comes to mind?
There are probably a lot.
The first is no one really wants to talk
too much about the massive inefficiencies
which are embedded in medicine
and the fee-for-service system
even though it’s the one that adds
the greatest amount of cost
to our healthcare system wasn’t even
addressed as part of the recent
Healthcare Reform Bill
even though many elements
of the President’s bill
are very laudable.
But we’re not going to control healthcare
costs until we get to grips
with the massive inefficiencies
that come from the
fragmented healthcare system
that we have.
It’s what I call the “ologist” problem,
the cardiologists and nephrologists,
the gastroenterologists;
each of them sees you separately.
So that problem definitely happens
quite often in the developed world.
Do we see the same challenges
in the developing world
and in essence are these really
global solutions
are we looking
at a lot of local solutions?
I think we have to look
at a lot of local solutions
and that includes the United States
and the European nations
as having their own local nuance
needs as well.
There are certain things
that can extrapolated,
certainly amongst the technologically
sophisticated nations
of the G8 and the OECD.
For the 139 nations that make
up the developing world,
although clearly one does focus health
on the level of the individual
for those societies the challenge
is much more global public health:
how do I control major infectious
and parasitic diseases
that fortunately we’re spared
from here in the west.
