Surfing the Data Tsunami

Data Crush is coming, and it gives us an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform aging and decrepit institutions, designed for the mid-20th century. As futurist Chris Surdak argues the “digital trinity” — mobile computing, social media and advanced analytics — is sweeping all before it. Digital-driven innovation is outpacing the ability of our ossified structure of government, laws and regulation to keep up. Insofar as antiquated institutions are failing us, this is a good thing. But Surdak, an evangelist for the digital future, warns that every silver cloud has a dark lining.

Insurance companies have the capacity to collect, store and analyze unprecedented volumes of data. At present, they utilize their own data to advance limited aims such as negotiating rates with hospitals and configuring networks of low-cost providers. Soon they will supplement internal data with social media and other sources to gain insights into sociological and behavioral dimensions of healthcare, and then with masses of data from fitness trackers such as FitBit and Jawbone that record pulse, blood pressure, and blood chemistry metrics like glucose levels. While these technologies raise privacy concerns aplenty, consumers seem more than willing to barter away their rights in exchange for the benefits provided by these technologies. By the time politicians and lobbyists begin to grapple with these issues, Surdak argues, entire industries will be disintermediated and transformed.

Virginia can either ride the wave or let it wash over us. We can either anticipate the data crush, and seek to guide it in socially positive ways, or we can accept whatever comes.

Right now Virginia’s political system is locked in a 20th-century, zero-sum debate over how to allocate the costs of health care — should Virginia expand Medicaid? Should we scrap the Certificate of Public Need regulatory process for hospitals? Almost no one is thinking about how to make the system work more efficiently to drive down costs and improve incomes in a way that would benefit everyone. (When I say “almost no one,” I have to acknowledge exceptions like Del. John O’Bannon, R-Henrico, a prime mover behind Virginia’s all-payer database, and former Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra, co-founder of Hunch Analytics, which applies Big Data to the educational and health care sectors.)

To my knowledge, no other state is taking the lead in thinking about the public policy implications of the Data Crush. No other state is trying to visualize the future, much less to grapple with the legal and ethical issues created by the tidal wave, much less how to ride the wave and re-shape first the insurance industry and then, leveraging the power of insurance, the health delivery system. Remember, despite the intrusion of the Affordable Care Act into the health insurance marketplace, private health insurance is still regulated by the states. Virginia still controls its destiny for private insurance.

Yes, the health care system is mired in the quicksand of subsidies, cross-subsidies and over-regulation that makes it hopelessly wasteful and unresponsive. But the Data Crush is inexorable. The potential exists to create powerful win-win-win social outcomes. Let us take advantage of this opportunity if we can.

(This article first ran in Bacon’s Rebellion on November 10, 2015)