Should drugs be the last resort? | Harry Gandhi | TEDxUW

In this impactful talk, co-founder of Medella Health, Harry Gandhi questions the current model of delivery of Canadian healthcare and asks whether there is a better way in which we can remodel the current system.

Harry’s passion for healthcare has motivated him to take some early strides in the health monitoring space. He is working on Medella Health, a start-up focused around creating a wearable technology platform for continuous and non-invasive monitoring of health vitals (starting with diabetes management). With this technology and platform, Harry aims to push the healthcare system from a reactive model to a proactive model, where diseases and symptoms are prevented rather than surprisingly obtained.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

By show of hands, how many of you
have gone to a doctor,

and you had
less than a satisfactory experience?

By a show of hands.

Huge, huge.

So let me tell you about a story.

A couple of months ago,
I had an eye infection.

If you don't know
what an eye infection is,

you're probably better off.

(Laughter)

I looked like a zombie with red puffy eyes
for weeks, and weeks, and weeks on end.

So as any normal person would,
I went to the doctor.

After 40 minutes of waiting,
I was seen for two minutes.

The doctor opened the door,
stood in the door,

and wrote a prescription
in under one minute.

The next minute,
I was outside of the office,

with the prescription in my hand,

and still unsure
of what I should be doing.

I had to take a course of antibiotic drugs
and stayed there for two weeks.

Later that night, being a mommy's boy,
I ended up chatting with my mom,

and after I consoled her about I was OK,
and I was going to be fine,

she mentioned something crazy,
and it's this,

she ended with this line,"In my time,
drugs were the last option."

And that got me thinking.

The way we do health care,

and the way our health care system
has evolved,

we live in a reactive model of care,

where we go to the doctor
only when things go wrong.

And it has become
this ordeal of patchwork.

Every time that our body breaks,
we patch it up by drugs,

or we patch it up
by as going as far as surgeries.

Instead of going into health care,
we're doing what I like to call sick care.

And the missing link is clinicians,
our patients, and our providers

not having enough data.

So how do we get this missing link?

The answer is twofold.

Number one is the organization of data.

The second is the data collection itself.

When we go out to the doctor,

not only should they have
our filed records,

and have all this information,

almost always, they're just
left there with one file,

with maybe our name,
our health card number,

and what we did in the last visit.

And that's extremely, extremely scary;

that we're letting doctors make decisions
based on pattern matching.

As an example of myself,
that visit did turn out great,

and it worked out great for me.

A couple of weeks later,
my eye infection was cured.

But there should be two ways
of looking at data

that I'm about to propose today.

The first is the genetic approach,

so that's studying our systems
from the inside in.

We have DNA that converts
to what we like to call RNA,

that converts to proteins,

and that makes up
who we are as human beings.

That's what I like to call
"the inside-out method";

studying our systems from the inside end.

And then the second part
is our biochemical approach,

what we study from the outside.

Our bodies are great
at excreting tears, urine, blood,

and all these analyzed--
that we can analyze for bio-markers.

I see a future
where these two will converge,

and these will be the best ways
to map out a complete health profile.

That's where data collection will come in.

The second part, data organization,
is where we need collaboration.

More than any time, we need it now.

Our clinicians, our patients,
our insurance providers,

all need work in an ecosystem

not just in silos
with misincentivized structures,

so that all this health information
can be translated

from one unit to the other.

I want to end up
with this thought here today.

In the last year, we spent
4 trillion dollars on our health care,

and that was just in North America.

Take that in for one minute.

Four trillion dollars on just health care,

and that's growing
year over a year at 7 percent.

This is a battle against time,
ladies and gentlemen.

We have a limited time
before our funds run out,

and we'll have to revert back
and decrease the amount of health care

that we provide to our patients
and to ourselves.

What scares me
is that we're not doing enough,

and that's what I want to encourage today.

I want to see a future

where instead of Harry
waiting for 40 minutes

to get two minutes of a doctor's time,

he should have known about what conditions
he was going to have beforehand,

and how we could potentially prevent
them from happening.

I should have known about my infection

weeks and weeks
before it actually took place.

I want to see a health care system
where we don't work in silos.

I want to see a future

where we can do information tracking
and manage the flow of diseases,

so we don't get an Ebola crisis again.

I want to see a future
where drugs are the last resort.

Thank you.

(Applause)