Silicon Valley IT companies will accelerate the convergence between Life Sciences and Computer Science in 2008 and beyond. This convergence will ultimately lead to the dis-intermediation of the entrenched pharmaceutical and health care industries and their political lobbies. Ten years from today, most of the diagnosis and treatment decisions currently performed by doctors will be automated. Obsolescence for existing doctors and medical students may be near. At the same time, consumers will make their own decisions based on facts, not physician opinions. Not only will consumers enjoy better health for dramatically lowered costs, they will remove an undemocratic element from our society.
Few realize that roughly half of the 50 United States, including California, allow physicians to make decisions for their patients without fully informing them of risks and alternatives. In the same way, the American Medical Association has placed the blame for our health care crisis on insurance companies while neglecting to mention that our medical and pharmaceutical paradigm is based on junk science that is mathematically impossible. As a result of this lack of disclosure, taxpayers are forced to fund expensive research that has no basis in science, throwing even more good money after bad. Ultimately, taxpayers have no say in stopping the AMA, Universities, and health care providers from wasting their money. The only democratic scrutiny in our medical system is our Byzantine tort system, resulting in the worst outcomes for everyone.
Many BioTech CEOs have long believed that IT people would leverage the valley's continuing education infrastructure to launch new careers in BioTech. Instead, they represent the tip of a wedge that will turn the BioTech Industry upside down. Silicon Valley engineers are learning that the current paradigm must be replaced with computer science based methods. Many of today’s pharmaceutical companies will write-off multi-billion dollar pipelines, or face the wrath of the tort industry. What remains to be seen is whether the CEOs and shareholders will be forced to swallow the loss, or whether we all have to continue to pay for dangerous, ineffective, and toxic drugs through our Medicaid and Medicare dollars. A new industry and a new way of doing business will arise out of the ashes of the old BioTech and Big Pharm model.
Awareness that biological information systems and human designed IT systems converge on the same design principles is increasingly reaching IT executives and VCs. Silicon Valley will pounce on the opportunity to get in on the bonanza. A new tech boom will result as the valley re-deploys existing talent to develop and patent models of biological pathways that will then be licensed to create “System-designed” diagnostics and drugs. Next generation companies will cooperate through open source consortia, forcing pharmaceutical and university researchers to change or face extinction. In addition to the promise of lower health care costs, IT companies will be motivated to participate in open source medical research by the need to acquire new engineering skills. IT companies will learn how to revolutionize their own core markets with nano-based technologies. Health care will become digital, democratized, ubiquitous and cheap. An entirely new product-oriented health care paradigm will displace the existing people and players and create new fortunes for entrepreneurs and savvy executives. Those individuals and companies that successfully make the transition will enjoy unprecedented opportunities for achievement and wealth.
