‘Disrupt’, ‘creatively destroy’, ‘flip’, ‘hack’, etc are tech buzzwords now commonplace in the healthcare public discourse. But, are they helpful or even accurate?

As Dr Bill Crounse points out in this piece and Brain Palmer noted in a Slate article about medical hackathons, lots of smart people within the medical world have been working on many of these tough problems for years. ‘Destructive’ language minimizes their work and the scope of the problems.

Nevermind these words are so widely used they have virtually lost all meaning.

Health care is far from perfect and change is needed, but what we need is actual improvement not overwrought rhetoric.