AMA’s Dr James Madara to Discuss Precompetitive Positions and Innovation Needs at AAO

During the Parker Heath Lecture at the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) annual meeting, James Madara, MD, CEO of the American Medical Association (AMA), will discuss the 3 arcs of the AMA’s strategic framework and the innovation that needs to occur.

Transcript

Can you give a preview of what you'll discuss during the Parker Heath Lecture at the AAO annual meeting?

I will discuss a couple of things. One is the strategic framework of the AMA, and it has 3 arcs. Those arcs represent what I would call precompetitive positions. One is chronic disease, one is lifelong learning, and one is removing obstacles from physician-patient interactions. And when you think about that, in the terms of precompetitive, the reason it’s precompetitive is that it doesn't really matter what health system we have, in the mid-century, if we don't have the workforce trained for the 21st century, if we haven't dealt with the problem of chronic disease that’s growing—it's now more than 90% of our $4 trillion health care spend and growing—and if we haven't removed the obstacles so that physicians can better interact with patients, none of those potential health systems would work very well in the mid-21st century. So, in that sense, these are precompetitive needs.

The second point I'll make is that a lot of innovation has to occur under these 3 arcs. Some of that innovation is done internally, some of it is that our venture company formation in Silicon Valley, Health2047. What unites all the work done here and there is that the problem definition has to be at the right site. Too often, the tools and services we have in health care have a starting problem definition at the administrative level. Then the solution is thrown over the transom into the clinic, and we get a series of point solutions that don't interact very well. We need to define a problem where we think the truth of the health system is, and that's between the patient and the physician.

I hope to make those points, and obviously they all require partnering, because these are big problems larger than any one organization can solve.