That pipeline is theoretically possible (and exists in some other countries), but in the US there are very substantial structural obstacles to creating and deploying it.
It sounds to me like a clear failure of political leadership. It would have been possible for Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Xavier Becerra to say that the problem is important and then give IBM 100 million to solve it but given that the leadership was largely just reactive and wasn’t interested in doing any leadership in the pandemic, the problem was left unsolved.
We could certainly have done much better (both before and during the pandemic), but unfortunately it isn’t as simple as just giving IBM $100M. Any solution needs to fit into the vast array of other existing systems used for reporting lab results, managing medical records in hospitals, etc.
The US delivers health care in a very patchwork way, which has made the deployment of electronic medical records very slow and difficult. Strong, smart leadership at the top would help a great deal, but even in the best possible case, really fixing this problem would take many years.
It sounds to me like a clear failure of political leadership. It would have been possible for Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Xavier Becerra to say that the problem is important and then give IBM 100 million to solve it but given that the leadership was largely just reactive and wasn’t interested in doing any leadership in the pandemic, the problem was left unsolved.
We could certainly have done much better (both before and during the pandemic), but unfortunately it isn’t as simple as just giving IBM $100M. Any solution needs to fit into the vast array of other existing systems used for reporting lab results, managing medical records in hospitals, etc.
The US delivers health care in a very patchwork way, which has made the deployment of electronic medical records very slow and difficult. Strong, smart leadership at the top would help a great deal, but even in the best possible case, really fixing this problem would take many years.