R.J.’s Take on The Digital Future, Part II, as seen in the Healthcare Marketer’s Exchange

A little over a year ago, R.J. Lewis’ The Digital Future, Part 1, was published in The Healthcare Marketer’s Exchange, and there is no denying that a lot has happened in digital since then. While he shifts back and forth between excitement and fear when thinking about the future of digital, R.J. is eager for what will lie ahead.

Now, R.J. is back with a part II, covering topics like privacy, changes and progress in the medical landscape, media and advertising, and the continued advancement of technology in the healthcare industry.

Below is a small recap of his full article.

Not surprisingly, R.J. kicks off this second part with the many issues surrounding privacy, which he says will most definitely remain a big concern in the future of digital.

In thinking about the current state of digital health, R.J. discusses how health care is improving in ways that go “beyond the pill,” with advancements in digital medicine, smart technologies, and biologics, to name a few.

On the clinical side of healthcare, R.J. talks about the changing medical landscape, where he predicts the role of physicians will likely be the first to become automated, in which computers will mimic their work at the same, or higher, level. Nurses, on the other hand, often possess skills that are nearly impossible to be taken over by robots, such as the qualities of compassion, empathy, and good bedside manner.

Moving on to the non-clinical side of the healthcare industry, R.J. turns his attention to media and advertising, commenting on how the shrinking number of ‘robust’ print companies will trigger publishers to continue to eliminate human-occupied positions like “digital advertising sales representative” and replace them programmatically.

R.J. assures us, however, that while job elimination scares many, it really shouldn’t, because “as long as we prepare as a
society and evolve and adjust to new economic models, we should be well positioned to relish this newfound freedom and perhaps usher in another culture renaissance enabled by the technology revolution.”

You can read R.J.’s complete article here in the March “Everything Digital” issue of The Exchange.