Healthcare Tech Space Review 2019

Health care is a rapidly changing and evolving field, and it is expected to grow and evolve at an increasing rate, especially due to the involvement of new age technologies in this field. Healthcare has a different growth pattern when compared to other sectors and it has its own challenges, some of which are being solved using the new age technologies. Some of the major things that have impacted health care space and are likely to impact it more in the upcoming years are mentioned here: –

• Change from Volume-based care model to Value-based Care model – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) established as a federal agency under the United States Department of Health, and Human Services has worked extensively towards changing from the present volume base model to a value based model where patients are provided with High value care at lower costs. CMS is working to provide a better health care model for individuals as well as the whole population which can be used by many other health care systems of other countries. The impact of value based care model is shown by results wherein there is reduced readmission rate, improved mortality rate which has resulted in a savings of over $2 Billion annually.
• Precision Medicine – 2019 witnessed a shift in trend from patient engagement to patient centricity, and there was a transformation in the way how complex diseases were analysed. Precision medicine model was designed in a way such that medical treatment can be given to a patient depending on their attributes such as their genetic make-up, prior treatment history and behavioral preferences which have helped in creating a patient-centric approach for treatment. This patient-centric approach has helped in increasing therapeutic success rate which earlier could not be achieved using the model of administering medicines depending on clinical symptoms.
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – One of the most talked about technologies in any field after the Cloud is AI and ML, and rightly so. Hospitals have a lot of data about their patients which they have not been able to analyze properly until now. With the use of AI, this can be done, and better treatment can be provided to patients while also helping in finding new solutions to some existing problems in the healthcare industry. ML can be used for analyzing a large amount of data, while AI is already helping in Robotic operations to automate some difficult surgery procedures.
• Blockchain – Healthcare is one field that has long been affected by frauds, and blockchain is a technology that can help reduce that. Using blockchain, there will be a traceable centralized record of all transactions made between the patient and the health care clinic or hospital that will help in reducing patient identity fraud while also making the data difficult to be altered. Health care systems will have access to Electronic Health Records which will help them treat their patients better.
• Gene Editing Technologies – There has been a rise in gene editing technologies in 2019, but there is still a very long way to go to make this technology a success. Gene editing technologies can help change the way diseases are detected in patients and how to treat them after detection, while also helping in the diagnostics of patients along the way.
• Telemedicine – Telemedicine is the way forward through which health care providers can provide virtual care to patients at home by remote patient monitoring devices. This is a less expensive and more effective technique as compared to admitting the patient in hospitals for things that can be treated at home and it also allows patients to live comfortably at their homes while receiving proper medical care.
• Wearable Monitoring devices – There is a rise in wearable patient monitoring devices that can be used to treat patients at their home as well while they are under constant medical attention of the health care facility. Many companies like Philips, GE provide such remote devices that can be worn by patients to be monitored all the time while also being able to freely move around the healthcare facility without being constantly stuck to their bed due to a large number of devices connected to them.

There has been a rise in the involvement of technologies in the healthcare system and with the growth and advancement in technology, it is expected to rise at a very steady rate. The above mentioned technologies are some of the few that have been constantly under the public eye but there are numerous other small technologies that the health care systems are constantly employing to treat their patients.