Health care: A need for a systems science look - Ivo P. Janecka, MD, MBA, PhD -- Seeking Alpha

Health care: A need for a systems science look - Ivo P. Janecka, MD, MBA, PhD -- Seeking Alpha: "When the financial meltdown was accelerating, there were public calls for a “look at the whole system.” That insight might have come from the clarity of vision gained through the realization that the “parachute” may not open and the “ground” was rapidly approaching. But, when the parachute did open, the clarity came out of focus; with that, the need for the larger system coherence vanished. In another word, “we have resuscitated the patient’s important organ/the financial system, but without doing any “major surgery” on the part that was seriously ill; resuscitation is only an emergency step, it’s not a corrective one. The consequence of that is that the “organ” is back to processing its toxic metabolites and heads to its eventual “disease” recurrence.

The issue with health care is much more complex because finances are only about numbers but health care is about people, human beings that actually create and maintain the economy through their productive/consumptive relationships. The whole economy is a large system as every individual is also a system in its own right fitting or not fitting into the larger societal system. Hence, the importance of really looking at health care from systems science perspective which offers guiding principle, based on biologic correlates, of function and structure."