Remaking Healthcare To Leverage GLP-1s, AI, Other Innovations

At the beginning of 2023, Oliver Wyman’s Sam Glick challenged healthcare leaders to take bold actions to reshape the industry. Whether it was responding to the rapid pace of development in science and technology or addressing the workforce crisis, Glick argued that healthcare needs “mission-oriented leaders who are willing to put their own careers on the line.”

In this Oliver Wyman Health podcast, Glick continues to advocate for leaders who are willing to challenge themselves, their organizations, and the industry. Rather than simply adopting one new technology after another, leaders need to look at the fundamentals and redesign the industry to make the best use of things like GLP-1s or artificial intelligence. “Organizations that will succeed are clear about their mission, clear about what they want to achieve and their objective,” he says, adding that they can’t afford to be everything for everyone.

Show Highlights:

“There is tremendous excitement about the role of generative AI or the role of GLP-1s, the role of basically any kind of new technology that's coming through. The challenge we have is (many of those innovations) don't fit naturally into the structures that we have built into healthcare.”

“When we look at GLP-1s, their impact on weight is hard to refute. But what (does that mean) not just for cost, but the way in which we engage people and support people long term? Do people need to be on these drugs for life? What does it mean to be on these drugs for life? You have to manage and monitor them for life. We're simply not set up to do that.”

“There's no such thing anymore as a 50-year capital investment — building a facility that's going look a certain way, putting in a system that's going be there for decades … We're seeing demographic shifts in this country. We're seeing migration in this country. Care delivery modalities are moving. So, a willingness to say we're going build and invest in agile ways, technology that we rent, don't buy; facilities that can be reallocated or that we lease. Labor models that might be far more flexible — where we're not necessarily making lifetime commitments to people. Those are the systems that are able to bob and weave and be agile.”

To learn more contact Matthew Weinstock, Senior Editor, Health and Life Sciences.