The Innovators

I recently listened to the book In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, written by Steven Levy.  I also recently started listening to the biography of Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson.  When I think about the most innovative companies of the last twenty years I definitely think of Apple and Google and the innovators, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.   The other day I was looking at the TEDMED website and on that site they have a section called The Hive.  The Hive has a list of 50 companies who are trying to advance health care through technology.  These are start up companies with big new ideas and the desire to make changes.

I was looking through The Hive website and wondering who would be the big innovators in healthcare.  I really do believe I am part of the last generation of mass trained physicians as we know them today.  50 years from now, computers and sensors, testing devices not yet invented will take my place.  We will need technicians, computer scientists, and engineers to continue to push the work forward, but the stethoscope wielding physician will be a thing of the past.  The process is already started.  Here is an article from The Atlantic, talking about how, Watson the super computer that won at Jeopardy, is being trained at Sloan Kettering to better treat lung and breast cancer.  Imagine an army of super computers all trained by the best specialists in the world.  Now imagine them being used after they are trained to treat patients on their own, instantly incorporating new data and always being up to date on the most proven treatments.  I don't think it will take too many studies after these computers are trained and their algorithms well tuned to show they make less mistakes than a human doctor.  We are decades away from the computes running the health care show, but it will likely be in our lifetimes.

That being said, who will be the Steve Jobs, Larry Page of Sergey Brin of the future?  Will it be one of the entrepreneurs listed on the TedMed Hive, or will it be someone from the USC Center for Body Computing?  Will it be a kid at Harvard, MIT, Stanford or UVA (my alma-mater)?  Or one of the million of computer engineers around the world, in China, India, Israel  Sweden or one of the other computer powerhouse countries?  Who will be the Innovator who changes our world?   Give me your ideas in the comments below of who you think might be the innovator of our future.