It would also allow for more focus to be put on prevention.

At issue, he advised, is that a debate over why connectedness and integration adoption is still “relatively low” needs to take place. Some of the adoption problem, he suggested, could be “partly due to traditionalism and partly due to allocation of funds,” noting that the study “won’t solve that.”


“But by convening people around the table, we believe we can advance the conversation and hopefully contribute to progress,” he advised, stressing that, “what we will do is bring clinical evidence that connected care is not only what people expect and want but it also has demonstrated success and return on investment.”

In the end, according to van Houten, the debate must happen at the local level. “Nobody can solve this globally for the world,” he pointed out, “but I do think benchmarking of measurements is the first station of improvement.”

In June, 2016, the inaugural Future Health Index showed that sometimes starting from scratch may yield benefits to health systems. "What you typically see in emerging markets is that people have basically nothing, and that is a big disadvantage," van Houten told HCB News at the time. "But that also means they have no legacy, and legacy is often in the way of adopting new technologies."

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