Digital health care could be “almost free around the world,” according to Draper Associates CEO Tim Draper.
“Health care is completely going digital,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy during a panel discussion at FinTech Abu Dhabi.
“That’s going to create health care that is almost free around the world,” said Draper.
According to Ibrahim Ajami of Mubadala Investment Company, one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds, the coronavirus pandemic has led to “probably the most significant acceleration of technology … we will witness in our lives.” He stressed how the role of technology in health care changed.
“Everything from clinical trials to drug discovery, to the transformation of health care systems and even telemedicine and personalized health — many of us are going to go through this entire Covid pandemic without ever seeing a doctor physically,” said Ajami, who is head of ventures at Mubadala.
Draper pointed out that artificial intelligence and data will help to produce “really good AI doctor” and develop drugs that cater to the person who is taking it.
He cited CloudMedx, a health tech company that Draper Associates invested in, which employs medical data to “do a better job of diagnosing your disease than the average doctor.” The company said last year that its clinical AI assistant outdid human doctors on a modified version of the United States Medical Licensing Exam in 2019.
“You start combining that with other pieces of data – your genetic history, your blood test results, your Fitbit results, what airplane seat you sat on, the food you ate – all that data is going to be available, and that data — that’s going to create a really good AI doctor,” said Draper.
Technology can help the industry come up with medicine that is unique to the recipient, and robots are even being involved in surgeries, he stressed.
Artificial intelligence will manufacture the specific medicine required, he predicted. “That’s going to be a fabulous place because I think most of that can be done with very low costs.”
The venture capitalist said that medical costs have been “crazy high” for several years. “Finally, we’re going to have a way of doing health care a lot cheaper.”
Digital health care items
There are digital technologies and pass being used now to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
One of those is SafePass, a contact tracing app developed by Citizen. It helps identify the people a Covid-19 patient has been exposed to.
Users can activate the contact tracing app after downloading Citizen’s other app, called SafeTrace, which is used to summarize one’s Covid-19 health history. Citizen will send users at-home tests, and subsidize the cost if the contact tracing app shows they may have been exposed.
Meanwhile, if a user wants to get hold of an at-home test without an indication they have been exposed, they can purchase one for $140 through Citizen.
The SafePass tool is part of the Citizen app. It automatically reveals the results of the Covid-19 tests the company distributes and lets users upload other tests themselves.
