Page 83 - WEF Reoprt 2020

Workforce limitations. Most health systems
are training and retaining too few doctors,
nurses and other health workers. For
example, the UK National Health Service
has an estimated 94,000 unfilled vacancies
in hospital and community services —
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almost 8% of its total workforce—and
risks an exodus due to burnout and low
morale. Disparities persist across countries,
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regions, care levels and areas of medicine.
Nearly half of the world’s population lives in
countries with over 100,000 people for every
psychiatrist. Even in the United States,
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with 10.8 psychiatrists per 100,000 people,
almost half of those currently practising are
expected to retire soon. The brain drain
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of health workers places further strain on
poorer and rural parts of the world.

New breakthroughs, new risks

Transformative technologies, medicines
and insurance that could vastly improve the
reach and quality of healthcare are on the
horizon—but they also bring new risks and ultimately make it possible for everyone—
trade-offs for health systems and societies. even in currently fragile, over-burdened
health systems—to access high-quality,
consistent, affordable, timely and
US$ convenient care.

But new technologies also raise risks,
2 million including risks of compromising patient
safety and privacy, as well as introducing
bias. Errors by individual health workers

consequences of AI errors could unfold
cost per patient of recent cell affect only their patients, whereas the
at a whole new scale. Since training data
and gene therapies sets in health often skew white and male,
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AI could fail to spot symptoms or devise
effective treatment plans for everyone else.
These outcomes will be tough to predict or
Disruptive technologies. Over the avoid because AI’s black-box nature makes
centuries health systems have embraced it difficult to understand how it reaches
many innovations, sometimes without conclusions—making it hard to spot bias.
waiting for them to be proven safe and Health data are especially vulnerable to
effective. Healthcare providers and payers cyberattacks, with risks of individuals being
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are already using today’s emerging identified even from anonymized data (see
technologies—machine learning and artificial Chapter 5, Wild Wide Web).
intelligence (AI), sensors, digital therapies,
telemedicine and so on—to support both Pharmaceutical revolution. Highly complex,
clinical and operational decisions: to triage specialized new drugs promise radically better
symptoms, interpret diagnostic tests, treatment for devastating diseases—but they
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create personalized treatment plans come at exorbitant prices. For example, three
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and predict re-admissions at a hospital or recently launched cell and gene therapies
epidemics in a population. Combined with cost up to US$2 million per patient. Over
human capacity, these technologies could the next few years, between 15 and 30 new

78 False Positive