Tech ‘disruption’ won’t fix global health problems

The perfectly designed app from Silicon Valley or a mobile health technology developed at a “hackathon” is unlikely to prevent or slow the next pandemic, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health infectious disease epidemiologist Caroline Buckee.

In a January 22, 2017 opinion piece in The Boston Globe, Buckee, assistant professor of epidemiology, said that new technologies aimed at quick fixes for global health problems—“the kind of disruption that tech companies love”—are no substitute for rigorous, peer-reviewed science.

“It has become fashionable to assume that any problem can be solved…by throwing money, smart young people, and a disruption mentality at it,” Buckee wrote. But she called the field of mobile health, or mHealth, “a wasteland of marginally promising pilot studies, unused smartphone apps, and interesting but impractical gadgets that are neither scalable nor sustainable.”

A successful public health program requires continuous investment and evaluation, she wrote. “In a world where technology moguls are becoming major funders of research, we must not fall for the seductive idea that young, tech-savvy college grads can single-handedly fix public health on their computers,” wrote Buckee.

Read Caroline Buckee’s Boston Globe article: Sorry, Silicon Valley, but ‘disruption’ isn’t a cure-all