Can Technology 'Cure' Health Care’s Future?

One day soon, patients will routinely interact with doctors via remote telepresence. It’ll be common for people to take digital photographs of medical conditions and send them to health-care professionals for evaluation. And improvements in data capture and analysis will lead the way toward better, more cost-effective medical care.

These are just a few predictions for how health care will evolve over the next 25 years. But the future of health care is cloudy at best, given the broad array of changes that will take place in the health-care system over the next several years. What’s clear is that technology will play a vital role in improving health care for Americans and making the system more sustainable. Whether it’s used to help ease the Medicaid burden on states or to enable patients to be diagnosed more quickly and easily, technology has huge implications for the future of health care ... whatever that future may bring.