The Great Decoupling | Navigating Healthcare’s Shift to DTC & Autonomous Care

Daniela Lamas MD moderated a discussion with AJ Blood MD, Calum MacRae MD, PhD, Holly Maloney and Ian Tong MD about what happens as more care moves outside traditional hospitals and into homes, virtual settings and new consumer models.

Lamas framed the session as an audit of the future: which parts of the hospital are genuinely durable, and which are likely to move elsewhere. Blood described cardiometabolic care that already works differently, using AI and team-based delivery to reach patients asynchronously rather than waiting months for the next office visit.

MacRae was more cautious about how quickly existing institutions will change, arguing that many of the biggest barriers are structural rather than technical. Maloney brought the investor perspective to the same question of where value will shift as new care models emerge. At the same time, Tong added a clinical view of what more autonomous and distributed care could look like.

The common thread was that healthcare already knows how to do many things better than it consistently delivers them. The disruption may come less from a single technology than from organizations built to close that gap without depending on the traditional hospital visit.