In a world where Amazon’s one hour delivery has altered our service expectations, where Uber has given everyone the convenience of their own chauffeur, where video technology has made co-workers in Shanghai just as close as those in Portland, it is surprising that there are industries that still operate on the antiquated norms of wait times, line-ups, and physical presence. Healthcare in the United States is a slow moving industry, but that is expected when you are serving 325 Million people and spending $3.4 Trillion.
While transformation within all industries is necessary for progress, it is particularly needed in the medical field. With all of our advances in medical research and technology, we have become significantly better at diagnostics and treatment, yet it seems like we are always fighting a losing battle. If it isn’t cancer, it’s another chronic illness or epidemic that takes over and consumes our healthcare system and its valuable resources. Despite our medical advances, we continue to play catch up to mother nature’s fury of illnesses.
Imagine a world where we turned the health journey on its head, a world where we ran ahead of illnesses instead of trying to catch up to them. A world where illness didn’t take us by surprise and where we were prepared to handle them, where healthcare truly meant “Health” care and not “Sick” care.
The progress we have made in medicine to date is immense — diagnostic accuracy, breakthrough vaccines, wearable tech, medical robotics are but a few of the highlights. The majority of these medical advances continue to be reactive — developed to address problems, and while wearable tech and monitoring devices are showing signs of promise in proactive uses, their ability to accurately provide leading indicators is still some years away.
The lack of significant advances in proactive care can be attributed to one thing — the service structure of healthcare delivery prevalent in the medical industry today.
Let’s think through the journey the average sick person goes through today:
At each point in the above journey, the focus is on treatment and the goal is the cure — which is what has traditionally driven innovation within medicine. We think that as the knowledge economy grows, and we start to understand the opportunities that can emerge from a slight shift in the existing service structure, we can transform the journey to be one where the focus is on self-knowledge, and the goal is prevention.
With imaware™, we aspire to create a world where we lead the charge of our own health, where the individual health journey aspires to be as follows:
The saying “Prevention is better than cure” was well ahead of its time (it was actually first said by Desiderius Erasmus in 1566)—our hope is that with our imaware™ advanced at-home health testing we can alter the service delivery structure of the healthcare industry and empower individuals to start controlling the course of their health, and in doing so help bring that saying one step closer to reality.
imaware™ is an advanced, ultra-precise at-home testing platform that empowers individuals with awareness of life-altering conditions such as prediabetes or diabetes, prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease. We believe that home-based testing is one of the best ways to start a conversation with your doctor about achieving your health goals.
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