28 - Book News - ‘Misunderstanding health’

With technological advances and information sharing so prevalent, healthcare should be more transparent and easier to access than ever before. So why does it seem like everything about it – from pricing, drug development and the emergence of new diseases to the intricacies of biologic and precision medicine therapies – is becoming more complex, not less?

Rohit Khanna’s book ‘Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America’s Broken Health Care System’ examines some of today’s most revealing healthcare trends while looking at these issues with alacrity, humour and vigilance. Over the course of eighteen short, engaging chapters, Khanna explains:

How unexamined beliefs can endanger patients, drive cost and increase bureaucracy
The ‘Dr Google’ effect on the ways that we seek (or eschew) care
Why American healthcare costs more than in any other country
The unintended consequences of using rating sites like Yelp
What we can learn about healthcare from hurricanes
How social media influencers impact healthcare
How artificial intelligence can improve healthcare
Why health screening programmes are so complicated
What the industry is doing to combat healthcare fraud
What the big deal is about legalising medical cannabis
How to think about behavioural ‘nudges’ designed to improve health
Why understanding how data is collected is critical to understanding what it can tell us – and much more.

Each provocative and easy-to-read chapter covers a familiar aspect of healthcare in a clear and succinct way. Offering inquisitive readers a warts-and-all view of American healthcare, ‘Misunderstanding Health’ is the book that you’ll want to read if you know enough to be frustrated by the system but want a deeper dive into its challenges and opportunities.

An accomplished strategic thinker, speaker and author, Khanna’s first book, ‘Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America’s Broken Health Care System’ is due to be published in November 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Khanna holds a BA from McGill University, an MBA from Queen’s School of Business, an MSc from the London School of Economics & Political Science and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health.

Based in Canada, Khanna has been writing a column about North American healthcare for PME for a number of years. You can read his latest column, ‘We’re following the science’, on page 13.