Original 2021 statement: We’re moving from a world in which we fix people after they’re sick - to one in which we know what they are going to become sick with and act accordingly
What Jim has written about this
From “Keynote: Thing Big, Start Small, Scale Fast: Innovating in the Era of Disruption” (June 2017)
Consider the world of health care. Essentially, today, it’s a system in which we fix people after they become sick. You come down with some type of medical condition; your doctor does a diagnosis, and a form of treatment is put in place. That’s overly simplifying things, but essentially that is how it works.
Yet that is going to change in a pretty fundamental way with genomic, or DNA based medicine. It takes us into a world in which we can more easily understand what health conditions are you susceptible or at risk for throughout your life. It moves us from a world in which we fix you after you are sick — to one in which we know what you are likely to become sick with, and come up with a course of action before things go wrong. That’s a pretty BIG and pretty fundamental change. I like to say that the system is going “upside down.”
Back to health care. We know that genomic medicine is moving us from a world in which we fix people after they are sick – to one where we know what they will likely become sick with as a result of DNA testing. But now kick in the impact of Moore’s law, as Silicon Valley takes over the pace of development of the genomic sequencing machines. It took $3 billion to sequence the first genome, which by 2009 had dropped to $100,000. It’s said that by mid-summer, the cost had dropped to under $10,000, and by the end of the year, $1,000. In just a few years, you’ll be able to go to a local Source by Circuit City and buy a little $5 genomic sequencer – and one day, such a device will cost just a few pennies.
From “Daily Inspiration: “You will barely recognize your industry in just 5 to 10 years. Will you recognize yourself?”” (August 2019)
We’ll know that the world of massive production runs of identical products was soon replaced by mass customization, driven by 3D printing.
Healthcare? In primitive times, we fixed people after they were sick - until genomic medicine led us to a world in which we knew what they were going to become sick with, and acted accordingly.
” In the Olden Days, We Only Farmed when the Sun Was Up; We Went to Places Called Stores to Get Things… and We Fixed People After They Were Sick. …”
From “The Trends Scorecard: Healthcare - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened” (June 2026)
Here’s the thing about healthcare. It moves at two speeds at once. The science screams forward at a furious pace, and the system crawls behind it, tangled in politics, inertia, and complexity. I’ve spent two decades telling rooms full of pharma executives, hospital CEOs, and benefits leaders the same core message: the future of medicine is a shift from “sick care” to actual “healthcare.” Way back in 2006, I walked into a half-day session with a major pharmaceutical player and laid it out like this. The big picture item is that we are in the midst of a fundamental, significant shift in healthcare philosophy and medical research: from a world in which we “react” to disease and illness after it has happened, to one in which we will be doing far more to “prevent” health care problems through highly personalized medicine. This is primarily coming about because of furious rates of discovery related to genomics. This more than anything will dominate the health care / pharmaceutical research / delivery agenda through the next years.
This was the foundational call: that genomics would drag the entire industry away from reactive treatment and toward personalized, preventative medicine. I made it in 2006, when the human genome was barely sequenced and most people had never heard the word “pharmacogenetics.” From a world in which we “react” to disease and illness after it has happened, to one in which we will be doing far more to “prevent” health care problems through highly personalized medicine. This is primarily coming about because of furious rates of discovery related to genomics. This more than anything will dominate the health care / pharmaceutical research / delivery agenda through the next years.
Back to that 2008 Washington keynote. My very first prediction — the headline one — was that by 2020 we’d have flipped the whole system upside down, from fixing people after they got sick to genuinely preventing illness in the first place. By 2020, we had successfully transitioned the health care system from one which “fixed people after they were sick” to one of preventative, diagnostic medicine. Treating them for the conditions we know they were likely to develop.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Keynote: Thing Big, Start Small, Scale Fast: Innovating in the Era of Disruption
Daily Inspiration: “You will barely recognize your industry in just 5 to 10 years. Will you recognize yourself?”
The Trends Scorecard: Healthcare - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened