When it comes to rising health care costs, is technology the problem or the solution? Both, says Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and one of America's most influential business thinkers.

In an interview featured as a Health Affairs Web Exclusive, Christensen talks with CHCF President and CEO Mark Smith about technology and disruptive innovation in health care.

He explains that there are two ways that technology can be introduced into health care. The first, which increases costs, is to help experts to "deploy more sophisticated things that historically were not possible to do." Examples include total body scanning and using titanium joints.

The second method of deploying technology can result in lower costs through "disruptive innovation," a phenomenon that Christensen has written about extensively across many industries. Citing the personal computer as an example, he explains that disruptive innovation is a technology that brings a more affordable and accessible product or service into the market, which allows a new population of consumers to buy and use this new product or service. In health care, Christensen says retail-based clinics, which are designed to treat a limited set of conditions, provide one such example.

According to Christensen, in the same way Intel turned the art of computer design into a "rules-based activity," we are now turning the diagnoses of increasing numbers of diseases, possibly even cancer, into rules-based activities. This shift would allow for lower-cost nurses and medical assistants to take over the treatment of these diseases from higher-cost physicians.

The complete article is available free of charge on the Health Affairs site through the External Link below.