A Healthcare Technology Community
Acarity is a healthcare technology community focused on the intersection of technology and healthcare. We are a community of technologists, data scientists, and healthcare professionals who are passionate about improving healthcare through technology. The goal of Acarity is to provide a platform for dialog and promotion of data and science driven understanding of healthcare, population health and policies that impact science and care delivery.
Throughout human history, advances in technology have deepened our understanding of healthcare, allowing us to improve the quality and length of human life. From application of the scientific method to human health and biology to the latest data science developments in population health, science and technology has been revolutionary in delivering care at scale. Changing demographics and an aging population in most industrialized countries will stress traditional care delivery models further emphasizing the need for scaleable technology-driven solutions that seek to further improve care delivery. There are however real challenges facing us all.
Misinformation
The rapid spread of ill-informed, anti-science misinformation has been made easier and misinformation has become much more prolific. These positions find ready audiences in closed communities seeking confirmation of bias. The anti-vaccine movement is the clearest example of this trend.
Economics
Healthcare is a business. The economics of healthcare are complex and often opaque. The business of healthcare is not always aligned with the best interests of patients. The Health Insurance industry in concept helps spread economic risk of medical care across a larger population; however, the number one cause of personal bankruptcy is medical debt and most of those are insured.
Politics
Even Healthcare is subject to the whims and macinations of politics. Issues such as public health are leveraged as wedge issues by positioning them as attacks on personal freedom and the delivery of care to marginalized and underserved communities provides easy targets.
Technology
Finally, technology in the forms social networks and artificial intelligence is promoting unproven or simply inaccurate information to increasingly walled-off communities. Often, this is done just to drive the core engagement goals of the platform without malicious intent.
Why Acarity?
We must address the many challenges facing Healthcare with truth and dialog. Acarity is a journey and one I hope you will take with me.
If you have interst, join the site, contribute to the conversaton, share external content or just stay and learn. Challenge those with whom you disagree (respectfully).
About Acarity
Founded by Bill Symans, under the name Kloudhaven, Acarity was originally envisioned as a Healthcare Consulting Practice. Bill has a long care in Healthcare Technology founding a consulting practice with clients in healthcare delivery, medical device, behavioral health, payer and specialty life science. After selling that practice, Bill joined the University of California, first as an enterprise architect in the Center for Digital Health Innovations (CDHI) with the University of California San Fransisco. Later, Bill joined the University of California Los Angeles as Application Manager for Salesforce and CRM.
Bill holds numerous certifications in Salesforce including architect and artificial intelligence as well as certifications in Epic, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. He has spoken at HIMSS and Dreamforce multiple times. Most importantly, Bill loves Healthcare Technology and helping advance care and support those delivering care everyday.