The amount of bullshit I've seen in the hospital gives me little faith that any policy change will solve the problem.
The real solution lies in producing safe consumer usable technology that moves all diagnostics out of the hospital. When we can get our comp, CBC, liver enzymes all with a drop of blood on a 1$ chip, when everyone and their neighbors own low cost portable MRI machines, when we can all read our EKG right on our cellphones and have it be interpreted for us 24/7 holter monitor style. Then it would only takes a team of engineers to produce software to quickly crunch all the data to produce a picture of our health... and save everyone from that expensive trip to the hospital.
Why is not like every other tech startup not making medical equipment and software then? It's a market that is growing, prices are going up, the software they use is terrible.. You're telling me we can't make a device that takes an xray and is more portable, safer, faster, and radically cheaper? (just as one example) And then there is the money.. you can have 3000% variance for the same service?!? and every VC in the world isn't just begging to get in?
I just can't believe that the regulations and the red tape can overwhelm and even defeat the greed.
Several YC companies/founders have talked about how incredibly difficult it is to work in anything that even remotely touches healthcare. The regulations and the red tape create market barriers so significant/costly to overcome that many VCs don't have the resources to break into those markets.
Everything related to medical devices is very capital intensive. From regulation compliance, to quality procedures, to patents and licensing, you need a lot of specialized people working for years to bring a product to market.
The real solution lies in producing safe consumer usable technology that moves all diagnostics out of the hospital. When we can get our comp, CBC, liver enzymes all with a drop of blood on a 1$ chip, when everyone and their neighbors own low cost portable MRI machines, when we can all read our EKG right on our cellphones and have it be interpreted for us 24/7 holter monitor style. Then it would only takes a team of engineers to produce software to quickly crunch all the data to produce a picture of our health... and save everyone from that expensive trip to the hospital.