Digitizing Healthcare, Because Our Lives Matter

This article originally appeared on IBM Big Data & Analytics Hub.

The United States spends around 17-18% of its GDP on healthcare every year. When you put this into dollar numbers, it is a mind-boggling $2.9 trillion.

Unfortunately, that spending will grow at a faster rate now due to baby boomers becoming an aging population, and they are the largest demographic in the U.S. (Baby boomers are about 76 million, which accounts for 25% of the population of the U.S.). The healthcare related spending is expected to grow at a faster pace than the under 5% annual rate it grew over the last decade.

Unless the U.S. gets this spiraling healthcare spending under control, in a few short years we will be spending almost 25% of our entire GDP in healthcare trying to fix people’s failing health, instead of spending it somewhere else where it is desperately needed. Obviously, we can’t stop the aging population, but we can make the healthcare system more efficient. Overall, chronic diseases account for about 86% of the health care spending in USA. Severe chronic conditions such as heart disease, arthritis, asthma and diabetes alone cost 33% of the total spending.