Someone commented to me that the concept of competing algorithms was very science-fictiony and hard to take at face value outside of the specific application of high frequency trading on Wall Street. I can understand how that could be argued, at first glance.

However, consider that systems are algorithms (you may want to re-read Part 6 of the What Medicine can learn from Wall Street series). We have entire systems (in some cases, departments) set up in medicine to handle the process of insurance billing and accounts receivable. Just when our billing departments seem to get very good at running claims, the insurers implement a new system or rule set which increases our denials. Our billers then adapt to that change to return to their earlier baseline of low denials.

Are you still sure that there are no competing algorithms in healthcare? They are hard-coded in people and processes not soft-coded in algorithms & software.

If you are still not sure, consider legacy retailers who are selling commodity goods. If everyone is selling the same item at the same price, you can only beat your competition by successful internal processes that give you increased profitability over your competitors, allowing you to out-compete them. You win because you have better algorithms.

Systems are algorithms. And algorithms compete.

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