As Jean Girard, the Formula One driver, asked in Talladega Nights, “Do you know why I came to America, Monsieur Bobby?”
Ricky Bobby replied, “Health care systems, giant water parks. The same reason anyone comes to America.”
The irony is hard to miss. No one should come to America for the healthcare system. We should go instead to a region of England often called Motorsport Valley, where most of Formula 1 engineering and manufacturing talent lives.
After attending a Formula 1 race at Circuit of The Americas in last weekend with my family, it struck me that Formula One is far more advanced than healthcare. Granted, it represents the pinnacle of motorsport, but when you compare the two, the gap is staggering.
Formula One teams make split-second decisions using data from more than 250 sensors, generating over 1.1 million telemetry data points every second. In contrast, healthcare often relies on a single pulse, blood pressure reading, EKG, and a few basic labs gathered during an occasional office visit to make life-and-death decisions.
Why can’t we do the same in healthcare, using remote vitals from wearables, home scales, blood pressure cuffs, and glucose monitors?
As Jean Girard said, “Like the frightened baby chipmunk, you are scared by anything that is different.”
Maybe that is the problem. Healthcare has been slow to embrace what is unfamiliar, even when the data proves it works. Healthcare must make the same leap.
Formula One predicts failures through thousands of simulations, accounting for variables like humidity, tire degradation, and track conditions. Clinicians can use digital signals in the same way to anticipate risk, personalize treatment, and prevent deterioration using wearables, home monitoring, and AI analytics.
This is not science fiction. It is simply Formula One logic applied to healthcare.
But even with all the data in the world, strategy means nothing without execution. That is where Formula One delivers another lesson: the pit stop.
A Formula One pit stop takes two to three seconds, with twenty people performing synchronized tasks in perfect precision.Mechanics are assisted by smart torque wrenches that provide instant feedback to the entire team of a problem. In healthcare, we are still using the equivalent of a manual lug wrench to coordinate between primary care and specialists. The system is slow, disconnected, and dangerously outdated.
In the words of Ricky Bobby: “Help me. Help me, Formula One, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Cruise. Use your witchcraft to improve healthcare.”