The acceleration of digital technology has enabled the disruption of many disparate industries. Yet health care, which represents about 10% of global GDP, has lagged behind other sectors. But that is about to change, as big data and the ability to crunch it will deliver actionable insights that will increase health care’s reach, efficiency, accuracy, and value. And just in time, too, because the demand for services is on the rise at the same time that the need to rein in costs is becoming ever more acute. The aging of the large Baby Boom generation, the rising prevalence of individuals with multiple chronic conditions, the widely anticipated shortage of both primary care and specialist physicians, and ever-increasing health care costs all exert pressure on a system ripe for disruption.
Four Steps for Digitalizing Healthcare
- Generate high-quality imaging, laboratory, and operational data
- Aggregate data with system-wide interoperability to enable transparency and knowledge sharing
- Analyze data while deriving actionable insights by leveraging analytics and artificial intelligence
- Operationalize digital innovations while focusing on effective change management to ensure buy- in from clinical and non-clinical staff
Mobile Apps and Individuals’ Engagement in Self-Care
The proliferation of mobile apps to help people manage their own health promises to make a real change in individuals’ lives. By 2018, as many as 1.7 billion people worldwide will use mobile health apps, according to a Deloitte report, 2016 Global Health Care Outlook: Battling Costs While Improving Care. People who are engaged in their own health care have better outcomes, and preventing disease or treating it early is better for the person and more cost-effective; these apps offer a chance for individuals to identify problems early on while motivating them to adopt better health behaviors.
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Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and the Promise of Better Care
As electronic health records, health information exchanges, and wearables proliferate, a greater quantity of patient data is available from more sources than ever before. This offers challenges as well as opportunities. One opportunity already being realized: Using electronic health records to identify gaps in care—for instance, patients who missed annual screenings or did not refill crucial medications—then closing those gaps. Keeping patients on track for care is not only good for their health but makes more sense from a cost perspective as well.
Internet of Things
Any kind of device that senses and communicates health data is part of the so-called health care Internet of Things, or IoT. Expectations of growth in this sector are robust. Tom Davenport, the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, says that the health IoT will become “the most important and prolific source of real-time health data that we will have.” Business Insider’s research arm, BI Intelligence, forecasts that health care IoT, excluding wearable consumer devices, will grow from approximately $95 million in 2015 to $646 million in 2020. In this category will be everything from thermometers to electrocardiograms to “smart” hospital beds and medication dispensers. By 2020, BI Intelligence predicts that there will be 24 billion IoT devices on Earth, or about four devices per human being on the planet.
Data interoperability is one key to reaping the benefits of this sector, but advances are being made at record pace. Consumer demand in all markets, aided by technology, will drive disruption in the health care industry. The potential upsides in the digital transformation of health care in the next three to five years are significant, for health care systems, payers, and consumers alike. And, of course, for smart organizations that find high-tech solutions to health care’s biggest challenges—among them access, quality, and cost—while meeting consumers’ demand to be engaged, informed guardians of their own health.
Health care transformation calls for less expensive and excellent care. That is why it is our mission at Siemens Healthineers to enable healthcare providers to achieve better outcomes at lower cost by expanding precision medicine, transforming care delivery, improving patient experience, and digitalizing health care.
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