The healthcare industry continues to transform itself, and at the heart of the transformation is digitization. Digital opportunities exist in every segment from health insurance to medical devices.
--By James Hsu
Suppliers who can bring innovation to the healthcare and health insurance industry are likely to have a great chance of success, and the opportunities are particularly plentiful in the area of full digitization. This includes developing digital channels, products, processes and advanced analytics.
As the industry continues to strive for full digitization, it must deal with factors like laws and regulations, changing patient needs and preferences, privacy challenges, and a variety of stakeholders who hold on to some amount of resistance concerning the integration of technology and healthcare information and health monitoring. Suppliers can develop and deliver solutions to advance businesses toward full digitization.
Integrating Communication Channels
Digitization is the conversion of images, pictures and text into a digital form that can be computer processed. Full digitization is the integration of technology with business processes and systems.
Full technology integration is the ideal, but nondigital channels will continue to exist because of lack of infrastructure or reluctance of patients or consumers to utilize digital services. Patient information channels include email, website or online portal, social media, smartphone apps, physical locations, mail or fax, and phone.
Suppliers providing solutions able to meet the needs of people utilizing various channels are needed. For example, apps can enable younger people to access things like health insurance information, patient portals and chronic disease management plans. Older patients may use patient portals more often and avoid apps. Integrating channels of information continues to be a wide field of opportunity.
Transitioning to digital technologies requires setting strategies and developing an execution plan. Developing an integrated multi-channel healthcare business creates consulting opportunities.
Companies like Econsultancy work with businesses, including healthcare companies, to help them with strategy setting, networking with clients (patients), market research for activities across a digital business, and training and development. It also maintains supplier profiles that include agencies, freelancers, technology vendors, consultants, and contractors who provide ecommerce services, digital marketing, technology, and/or solutions.
DRG Digital is a company that works with pharma and healthcare companies in the areas of research, analytics and strategies. The company is focused on innovating a digitally-powered patient journey through a variety of touchpoints – development of new symptoms, prepping for a doctor's visit, diagnosis, selecting a treatment, condition management, and treatment switching. DRG Digital supplies services around marketing, social intelligence, digital clinical trial strategy, physician digital engagement and patient digital engagement. For example, in the area of clinical trials, DRG Digital assists with setting up social channels to support clinical trial recruitment and leveraging digital resources to increase patient engagement.
Sensing Health
These two companies demonstrate the kind of supplier opportunities available to help healthcare companies continue a digital transformation. Among the other companies working on digital innovations is Proteus, which has developed Proteus Discover that consists of an ingestible sensor, a wearable sensor patch, a mobile phone app, and a provider portal. The ingestible sensor is swallowed with medication and transmits to the patch. A digital record is sent to the app and then to the Proteus cloud where healthcare providers and caregivers can access patient information.
Opportunities in digital technologies cover the spectrum. They include providing services like assisting patients with disease management via an app, transmission of patient data via sensors (wearables and implants) to healthcare providers, and managing the enormous amount of data digital technologies produce. In the pharma industry, digital technologies can connect pharmaceutical companies with research firms and healthcare providers. There is a need for improving the security of patient data as systems, like healthcare insurance and electronic medical records, are integrated.
Internet of Things and Healthcare Join Forces
The digital transformation of healthcare is also moving toward incorporating technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and artificial intelligence.
IoT will play a part in healthcare through products like IoT-enabled biosensors. A biosensor is a device that converts a biological response into an electrical signal via a transducer. IoT-enabled biosensors are part of an emerging Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), which includes sensors, digital platforms, intelligent diagnostics and quality assurance. The ultimate goal is the development of health tools that enable the reliable diagnosis and monitoring of patients at the point of care, rather than in medical facilities.
As the industry moves toward IoMT, big data will enable a whole new way to diagnose patients. For example, the research firm ETHZurich's Mobile Health Systems Lab is developing new technologies and services for health applications at point of care. Right now it is focused on intelligent diagnostics, novel mHealth (mobile health) sensor and systems, and quality assurance in mHealth.
Shifting the Balance of Power
There is a clear shift toward giving patients more power over their health care, spurred on by younger generations that trust and utilize technology for most activities in their lives. It is true for health insurance companies as well as physicians, caregivers and other medical personnel, and the transformation is still in an early stage in terms of the full utilization of technology.
Rising costs are just one of the reasons for the shift. The other reasons include an aging population that experiences higher rates of chronic disease and needs regular care, a networked global healthcare community sharing massive amounts of data, and a younger generation that is comfortable with technology and is driving change by presenting new perspectives.
Suppliers who recognize and take advantage of the opportunities in the empowerment of patients and providers via digital technologies are setting themselves up for long-term success.