Hacking Health: Bottom-up Innovation for Healthcare

In many countries, healthcare services are not currently provided in a sustainable manner. Healthcare systems and institutions are still largely based on providing acute and reactionary care; this approach is not well suited to the increasing burden of chronic disease in an aging population that requires more preventative and long-term care (World Health Organization, 2002: tinyurl.com/d5mf4dp). Thus far, the response to growing demand has been dramatic increases in health spending. Over the past 50 years, health spending has outstripped overall growth in GDP for OECD countries (OECD, 2011: tinyurl.com/bq4prbp). In Canada, health spending in the last decade has grown at double of the rate of revenue growth (CIHI, 2011: tinyurl.com/d86xla7).