Healthcare research is finally mainstream
After introducing Linda Green for her keynote speech today “The New Age of Healthcare Delivery”, I couldn’t help but reflect on a long way that healthcare research has come since 20 years ago. We now have Health Applications Society within INFORMS. We have Healthcare Department in Management Science. We have numerous Healthcare tracks at INFORMS and even more numerous talks. This is a vibrant community which uses a variety of tools and methodologies and addresses all parts of healthcare.
This is a fantastic and fast transformation, which is clearly justified. 18% of US GDP is in Healthcare, quality of care is inadequate, and there are huge gaps in access to services. As Linda noted, Healthcare is changing now: we are moving from fee for service to fee for value, which leads to major changes in how Healthcare is delivered and measured. Enabling this transformation is increasing use of IT and data in healthcare, which opens unique opportunities for applications of operations research and management science. If you are a junior researcher, thinking about your next topic, Healthcare seems like a no-brainer to me.