Newsletter
Alignment and Adoption2025-03-23
“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.”
—Tim O'Reilly
The adoption of new technology and approaches depends not just on their intrinsic value, but of their perceived value, and alignment with the needs of the people they are supposed to serve.
In medicine in general, and in psychiatry in particular, there are four scenarios. First, for severe patients, with high healthcare utilization, who may be too disoriented and incapacitated by their suffering, it is the family or payors who drive adoption, when nothing else works. Second, for patients who are of intermediate severity, receiving care as usual but with suboptimal results and/or with side-effects, it is the patients themselves who seek new approaches. Third, for relatively well (and well-off) patients, concierge medicine, preventive approaches, it is the doctors who drive adoption, as a way of enhancing their prestige and ability to attract patients. Fourth and last, pharma companies may adopt new methods for developing new drugs (especially if others are doing it too), to enhance probability of success and have a companion diagnostic.
Having these different constituencies and alignments can seem confusing, unless one keeps the main thing the main thing, which is to help improve patient’s lives. All the rest is secondary, and will fall into place if real value is provided by the new technology.