The Health Tech Revolution: Is It Really Transforming U.S. Healthcare?

(1.5 Credits)

Healthcare technology has promised for decades to transform American healthcare. Electronic health records, digital and virtual care, remote monitoring, consumer technologies, venture-backed startups, artificial intelligence, and emerging autonomous technologies have changed how information is generated, patients access care, clinicians work, and healthcare organizations operate. Yet many fundamental problems of the U.S. healthcare system—fragmentation, affordability, uneven access and quality, workforce constraints, administrative complexity, and inequity—remain. The Health Tech Revolution: Is It Really Transforming U.S. Healthcare? examines the evolution of health technology through a critical health policy and healthcare systems lens. This seven-class course traces the evolution from the pre-digital healthcare system through electronic health records, consumer and virtual care, the growth of the health-tech industry, technology-enabled care models, artificial intelligence, and emerging automation. Rather than focusing primarily on technical capabilities or individual products, students examine why successive waves of innovation emerged, what problems they promised to solve, what they actually changed, who benefited, what unintended consequences followed, and what remained unchanged. Particular attention is paid to how reimbursement, regulation, markets, organizational incentives, workforce, information, and healthcare delivery shape whether technological innovation produces meaningful system change. Throughout the course, students repeatedly ask four questions: 1. What problem was the technology supposed to solve? 2. What did it actually change—and what remained the same? 3. Who gained, who lost, and whose power or responsibility changed? 4. Did it transform healthcare—or simply change how the existing system operates? Ultimately, the course asks students to distinguish technological advancement from healthcare transformation and develop the judgment to assess whether innovation meaningfully improves access, quality, affordability, equity, patient experience, workforce performance, or system accountability.