On November 13th, David Theobald, CEO and President, and Emily Allen, Implementation Assistant, attended the 2019 Healthcare Innovations Conference - The Future of Healthcare held by Pandion Optimization Alliance. The keynote speaker, Dr. Emmanuel Fombu, Director of Innovations at Johnson & Johnson, spoke about the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Dr. Fombu authored the book, The Future of Healthcare: Human and Machine Partnering for Better Outcomes. Dr. Fombu’s speech focused on the importance of artificial intelligence in the medical field now and in the future. 

Dr. Fombu spoke of Google, Amazon, CVS, and other entities that are using artificial intelligence to gather data sets and ultimately change the future of healthcare. Some of the big changes that this generation has come across regarding artificial intelligence are Fit Bits and Apple watches. Both products gather health data from the users that is then stored in a data set. This data can be used to predict diseases and other health. Although the data collection can advance healthcare, there is a growing fear that it could result in an invasion of privacy if the consumer is not in control of the information being shared.

He also spoke of this data being used to advance health care even further. The data will not only help the individual who is using the product that has built-in artificial intelligence but help other people moving forward. Dr. Fombu noted that if this data is collected by consumers of these products, it helps companies build data sets for advancing healthcare. These data sets can be used nationally and globally to help prevent, treat, and potentially cure the population. He also spoke of these companies and his predictions of using these data sets to create a new healthcare system. He continued to predict that in the future big corporations like Amazon, Google, Apple, and CVS will pivot and begin selling different health insurance plans and set rates based on an individual's health data.

Finally, Dr. Fombu’s speech was extremely impactful. His insight into the future of healthcare showed the importance of technology. The technology used by today’s generation will help advance and ultimately change how consumers shop for health insurance and healthcare services in the near future.