The promise of technology

This chapter focuses on how technology can contribute by helping the healthcare system to do more with less, empowering individuals with chronic conditions to live well for longer, and providing the tools to make populations healthier in the 21st century. Healthcare owes much of its success to technology, from penicillin, aspirin, and blood transfusions to transplantation, monoclonal antibodies, genomics, modern imaging, and surgery. Today, emerging and digital technologies—the fourth industrial revolution—have the potential to transform health and care services, making it better and easier for staff and patients, but unfortunately health and healthcare are yet to participate fully in the digital era. Public services as a whole lag way behind other sectors, let alone their users, the public. To drive change, both users of healthcare and those working in it must demand better and play their part in making it happen.