On fortune telling for health informatics

Abstract

This paper examines the paper of Haux et al. in this issue of this journal. It gives some background on specifics of the German health care system, which underlie the theses and prognoses proposed by Haux et al. In analogy to a forecast of the future of health informatics, which is now 10 years old, I then suggest that these attempts meet two types of challenges:that of overestimating the positive effects of recent advances, which later are found not to scale up; and that of blind spots with respect to unforeseen significant advances. The attempt to find indications of such in the projections of Haux et al. leads, among other, to the conclusion that the projections of direct linkages between patients and care providers may be overoptimistic. As to whether the deviating opinions matter in the end, it is concluded that the technology advances may require less attention that the restructuring of the health care system required to take advantage of the advances of technology.