Technology is changing Healthcare from top to bottom

“Technology-driven innovation holds the potential to improve our understanding of patients, enable the delivery of more convenient, individualized care—and create $350 billion to $410 billion in annual value by 2025”, predicts McKinsey.  

In the past one decade, there has been more than 180% rise in health tech and digital health investments and over 230% increase in pharmaceuticals and biotech investments. In the next six years, US healthcare is expected to top $5.34 trillion. The industry is shifting its focus to value-based care from volume-based care. With data becoming the new health currency, technology will be driving effective care delivery, enhanced clinical productivity, variability & waste reduction, and non-clinical efficiency.  

In its insight report, McKinsey has identified nine emerging technologies that will disrupt the healthcare as we know it. These technologies include connected and cognitive devices, electroceuticals, targeted and personalized medicine, robotics, 3D printing, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotic process automation. While not all of them have a use case at present, but each of the technology have immense potential in terms of improving the way care is received and provided.  

Several startups as well as industry incumbents are investing in ground-breaking research to offer a sustainable, technological-advanced solution for lifting the challenges that healthcare is facing today. One such startup, Doc.ai, announced the initiation of a new digital trial in which it will be testing the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and data analytics to improve predictability and accuracy of treatment options for Epilepsy. While Epilepsy is just a start, the outcomes of this trial can significant in achieving breakthroughs in medical research and treatment. 

From Electronic Health Records to Telemedicine and robotic surgeries, the industry is awakening to a new dawn of technology-driven, value-based healthcare. Let us understand the ways in which technology is disrupting healthcare with the help of a few examples: 

AI becomes the biggest force 

Artificial Intelligence is the hottest cake in every industry, with everyone trying to get at least a small slice. When Amazon announced its venture into the healthcare sector, it raised the bars of expectation as well as anticipation. Using its voice-based assistant, Alexa, Amazon could expand its operations in the virtual care or telemedicine domain. Amazon is strengthening its foothold in the sector using its technical capabilities.  

In a recent article, Forbes predicted for AI-as-a-service to gain momentum further in 2020. AI in the healthcare market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 50.2% by 2025.  

With intelligent automation coupled with smart algorithms, health tech companies are empowering care providers to predict, prevent, and treat diseases with maximum accuracy. Smart sensors, Natural-language processing (NLP) tools, and Machine Learning systems have the potential to streamline hospital processes while accelerating the time to patient attendance. 

Predictive and personalized care makes its way 

A recent survey of healthcare payers and providers indicated that about 87% of the executives believe that predictive analytics is important to the future of their business and 60% of them trust to save 15% more in the next five years with the help of predictive analytics. 

Traditionally, healthcare providers relied on their expertise and experience to prescribe a treatment or a medicine. This is a life-threatening gamble that the care providers had to take, especially with high-risk patients and critical conditions. With predictive analytics, it becomes feasible for such decision-makers to back their instinct with facts and calculation. By combining different variables of a patient such as age, medical history, present condition, drug allergies, healthcare providers can offer a personalized service with much higher accuracy and chances for success. 

The growing influence of data 

The Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) recently announced the launch of an advocacy, digital health platform for data-driven healthcare. Andy Fish, Chief Strategy Officer at AdvaMed rightly emphasizes the value of data in healthcare – “Digital technologies and data-enabled insights and interventions are fundamentally changing how patient care is delivered. This new era of care will be revolutionary, not just evolutionary, but we’re still in new territory and there are barriers to overcome on the way to a future in which the promise of digital health is fully realized. Our new Center is focused on ensuring that regulatory, payment and delivery system reforms will accelerate and expand access to innovative digital health technologies and solutions.” 

Data is exploding and expanding in terms of its scope, size, volume, and authority. As we discuss the engines of the healthcare future, it is critical to note that data is the fuel that will be actually driving them. Data is used to gain a deeper understanding of disease patterns to increase the efficiency of care.  

To conclude 

Driving healthcare with technology is as challenging as it seems promising. With digitization, healthcare organizations have to tackle cybersecurity issues. Technological innovations require high investments, which may further increase the growing costs in the industry.  

However, if done right, technology has the potential to improve patient care as well as drive down the overall costs. With the aging population, rising expenses, increasing disease complexities, technology provides a viable outlet to the healthcare sector for achieving exponential growth. 

With the adoption of technology in healthcare, the industry also needs to establish patients’ trust in the innovative solutions. Cigniti’s software testing capabilities in the healthcare & lifesciences domain help the industry players to effectively build assured quality within their offerings. Schedule a discussion with our experts to know more.