Innovation in the Military Health System Top 10 emerging technologies that could yield dramatic improvements
31 October 2018
Learn which technologies and tools can help the Military Health System overcome rising costs, increase consistency in care, improve outcomes, and drive innovation over the next 10 years.
The Military Health System (MHS) requires innovation. Like some civilian health care organizations, the MHS struggles today with rising costs and inconsistent outcomes; it also struggles to give all the populations it serves timely and consistent access to care.1
The MHS’s guiding framework, the “quadruple aim,” states four goals: (1) ensuring readiness, (2) enhancing population health, (3) providing a convenient and high-quality experience of care, and (4) reducing health care costs.2
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Which technologies are most likely to help the MHS achieve these goals and drive innovation over the next 10 years?
To answer this question, we started with a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions study, Top 10 health care innovations: Achieving more for less, in which Deloitte surveyed 85 innovation leaders across the health care system to gather their opinions about which technologies are most likely to transform health care over the next decade. The forces that are transforming the health care system at large are working similar changes within the MHS. As we considered the list of innovations, we decided to investigate how they would apply to military health care.
The performance of the MHS today can be defined by its rules, policies, regulations, enabling technologies, operating models, customs, and patient and provider preferences; together, these elements comprise the frontier of what is possible. Despite attempts to spur progress, the performance of the MHS today remains at the edge of this frontier. To achieve true breakthroughs, the MHS may need to embrace new technologies and new models for operations. For example, it could reexamine the traditional, dominant, fee-for-service (FFS) payment model, which does not align provider incentives with the goal of reducing health care costs.
The top 10 list of technologies most likely to promote the quadruple aim and drive innovation within the MHS are:
- Virtual health. The use of teleconferencing, mobile apps, and other technologies that allow patients to connect with health care providers across vast distances.
- Augmented reality. Technology that adds interactive, computer-generated elements to the user’s surrounding environment, or masks things that exist in the environment.
- 3D printing. A technology that can be used to create prosthetic limbs, skin, organs, and implants for soldiers injured in battle.
- Robotic surgery. A type of minimally invasive surgery in which a surgeon controls the tools he or she needs using a computer.
- Next-generation patient-centered care. Care that is tailored to each individual’s unique needs and desired outcomes.
- Wearables. Devices—such as wristbands and smart clothing—that can be worn to monitor an individual’s activities without limiting or interrupting regular movement.
- Augmented intelligence (AI). Technologies that supplement, inform, or perform tasks that otherwise require human cognitive capabilities.
- Blockchain. A record of transactions; each transaction is validated in an encrypted system before being recorded and added to the “chain.”
- Precision medicine. Medical care that is tailored to a patient’s behavior, social context, environment, and genome.
- Regenerative medicine. Care that involves “creating living, functional tissues to repair or replace tissue or organ function lost due to age, disease, damage, or congenital defects.”3
The 10 innovations we describe in this report have the potential to expand the frontier of what is possible at the MHS while delivering on the quadruple aim. MHS is not exempt from the changes that are shaking up the broader health care market. Patients who receive care through the MHS generally have the same expectations as customers in every other health care system. And, the desire to control health care costs is universal. All these forces make it important for the MHS to consider innovative strategies.
Value-based care (VBC) creates incentives for providers to experiment with care management and patient engagement approaches that could improve health outcomes and reduce spending. Some stakeholders are recognizing the importance of activating patients in their own care and are investing in capabilities to encourage this. Meanwhile, new data sources and tools are informing clinical trial design, treatment decisions, and ongoing patient care.
Incorporating these top 10 innovations would require changing how the MHS and its partners currently prevent, diagnose, monitor, and treat disease. Leaders should determine which innovations break performance trade-offs, or create more value for less investment in a way that impacts their core operations.
As MHS leaders contemplate launching one or more of these initiatives, there are several steps they should consider taking:
- Set priorities, and then diversify the portfolio of innovations.
- Identify the MHS’s role in an innovation ecosystem, then build the ecosystem.
- Seek knowledge from nontraditional sources.
- Start with small pilots, then scale up.
- Stay up to date and agile on new technologies and opportunities for innovation.
Download the full report, Innovation in the Military Health System: Top 10 emerging technologies that could yield dramatic improvements, for a more in-depth look at how these 10 innovations could help transform the MHS.
Deloitte Center for Government Insights
The Deloitte Center for Government Insights shares inspiring stories of government innovation, looking at what's behind the adoption of new technologies and management practices. We produce cutting-edge research that guides public officials without burying them in jargon and minutiae, crystalizing essential insights in an easy-to-absorb format. Through research, forums, and immersive workshops, our goal is to provide public officials, policy professionals, and members of the media with fresh insights that advance an understanding of what is possible in government transformation.
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Contact
- Dr. Bruce Green
- Managing director and chief medical officer
- Deloitte Consulting LLP
- brucegreen@deloitte.com
- +1 615 268 4216
