Health care innovation is moving fast, but at Health Connect South, a more immediate question took center stage: What good is the next breakthrough if patients cannot afford or access it?
More than 1,100 health care leaders, researchers, physicians and students registered for Health Connect South’s annual gathering Sept. 16 at the Georgia Aquarium, where experts examined affordability, access, preventive care, brain health and artificial intelligence. The gathering connected health systems, researchers, universities and businesses to tackle these and other regional health challenges.
For Corwin Harper, president of Kaiser Permanente Georgia, that challenge is personal.
Harper told attendees he was returning two weeks after robotic surgery that removed 20 percent of one kidney, an experience he said reinforced the importance of collaboration.
“As a leader, we’re never intended to walk alone,” Harper said. “As a leader, you’ll be put in a place of humility where the only thing you can [say] is, ‘I need help.’”
Harper also challenged attendees to improve health outcomes in Georgia, which U.S. News & World Report ranked No. 35 nationally in health care.
“How do we come together to figure out how [to] make health care in Georgia move from being number 35 in the country to being number one?” Harper asked. “That’s the challenge.”
Affordability and access emerged as recurring concerns. According to United States of Care 71 percent of Americans consider health care unaffordable, making affordability an urgent challenge.
In an interview following the panel, Hamza Hasan, executive director of strategy and implementation at Kaiser Permanente, said rising health care costs have translated into higher copays and deductibles some patients cannot afford.
Hasan described value-based care as focusing less on the volume of services and more on long-term health outcomes, prevention and primary care.
“Our outcome for…value-based care is something that delivers improved health outcomes and improved access to affordable care,” Hasan said.
Hasan said Kaiser Permanente physicians are salaried rather than paid based on the number of visits they provide, aligning incentives with patients’ long-term health. He pointed to preventive measures such as flu shots, colorectal cancer screenings and mammograms.
Technology could also support that shift. Hasan said Kaiser Permanente is using AI for ambient listening during medical appointments. With a patient’s permission, the technology can record a visit and help structure clinical notes.
“Instead of them typing the whole time, they’ll be able to look at you directly, have a personal conversation, understand your needs in a more direct way,” Hasan said.
Still, speakers cautioned against treating AI as a solution to every health care problem.
Dr. Chris Rozell, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Society, said AI can help researchers analyze complex health data but raises concerns about privacy and access.
“Data privacy would be a big one,” Rozell said. “Equitable access to advancing technologies would be a big one.”
Dr. Jeffrey Skolnick, a Georgia Tech Regents’ professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology, cautioned against replacing scientific research with AI.
“It’s no substitute for real experiments on either lab, or real people,” Skolnick said.
The discussion also underscored something AI cannot replicate: human relationships. David Rubinger, Market President and Publisher of the Atlanta Business Chronicle, noted that during a major medical crisis, people may turn to AI for information but ultimately seek a specialist “who you trust, who you respect.”
The stakes extend to brain health.
Dr. Tim Denning, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance, cited McKinsey estimates that scaling known brain health interventions could avert about 267 million disability-adjusted life years globally by 2050 and generate up to $6.2 trillion in cumulative global GDP gains.
Dr. Allan Levey of Emory University said nearly half of Alzheimer’s risk factors are potentially modifiable, pointing to exercise, education and managing other medical conditions.
“If we do those things decades in advance, there’s a great chance we’ll have a major impact,” Levey said.
Dr. Yogin Patel, CEO of ApolloMD, said high blood pressure and diabetes still require preventive care.
“The highest ROI [Return on Investment] might be from a blood pressure cuff,” Patel said, “and someone that actually can intervene when they find out that your blood pressure is too high.”
For all the discussion of AI and emerging technology, Health Connect South returned to a more immediate challenge: making care affordable, accessible and preventive. Innovation may reshape health care, but its promise means little if patients cannot access, or afford, the care they need.
