One Patient, Many Diagnoses: The Case for Integrated Chronic Disease Care

Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in the US and a primary driver of more than $5 trillion in the nation's annual health-care spending. Their cost compounds well beyond the clinic, through disability, lost productivity, caregiving, and premature mortality. Our understanding of these conditions is shifting. Cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic conditions are no longer understood as separate diseases that happen to coincide, but as an interconnected system in which each condition accelerates the others. That points to a larger opportunity: managing these conditions as a continuum rather than a series of isolated diagnoses. This session convenes leaders in therapeutics, diagnostics, and global health technology to examine what an integrated approach to chronic disease would demand—of drug development, of screening and risk prediction, of health systems and payment models—and how much value, human and economic, is waiting on the other side.