By leveraging the power of leading-edge solutions, healthcare-based organizations can effectively solve once-impossible challenges and issues.
For example, one of the future healthcare trends known as Artificial Intelligence (AI) can analyze highly vital information on the patients’ medical condition and help experts to establish a fast and accurate diagnosis. Any critical patient can be monitored remotely on a twenty-four-seven basis thanks to The Internet of Medical Things, which also allows us to perform preventive measures and save lives.
Another great example here is mobile health technology, which is equally useful for a healthcare segment, as many IT companies develop comfy multi-functional healthcare apps. It’s no wonder 80% of physicians use medical apps to enhance their work, in compliance with the Research2Guidance report.
Another research says the digital health market is forecast to expand over $200 billion by 2020 driven particularly by the mobile health market.
“I absolutely think that organizations need to embrace digital. There is no way around it. An organization that is not embracing digital is going to not be around very much longer.” - Dr. Daniel Nigrin, Senior Vice President for Information Services and Chief Information Officer, Boston Children’s Hospital, United States
The more the digital market grows, the more competitive innovations we can expect in the future. The world competition and criticism are key progress drivers, after all. Those companies, denying such an obvious fact, risk everything, when not implementing digital solutions into their business, but it’s true for non-profit organizations as well.
So, let’s have a closer look at 10 emerging healthcare technology trends and find out their benefits.
Telemedicine allows physicians to remotely communicate with patients by using video conferencing software, for example, and provide treatment in case of non-urgent situations. It has become quite popular in recent years as it provides users with a number of advantages. They are as follows:
Telemedicine can be divided into three major categories:
The total amount of organizations applying to the telemedicine grows exponentially, so global telemedicine market size is forecast to reach more than $41 billion by 2021, according to Statista research.
The Internet of Medical Things or the IoMT, in short, is the ecosystem of connected medical devices, tools, services, and software, designed to monitor and test patients’ condition. It’s one of the most crucial technology trends in the healthcare industry, as such devices are way more affordable than ever and allow people to constantly control their health.
Physicians utilize IoMT to remotely monitor their patients’ conditions, such as blood pressure, temperature, pulse, heart rate, glucose level or get alerts when a patient forgot to take a pill and so on.
On the other hand, non-physicians can use sticking plasters or other popular wearable devices like smartwatches with attached software on smartphones to monitor their health condition themselves. Ingestible pills can sometimes replace such unpleasant medical procedures like fiberoptic gastroduodenoscopy and provide valuable data, processed by a smartphone app.
The IoMT-based solutions help experts greatly and will definitely change the whole medicine sector shortly. In compliance with the survey of the Research and Markets, the total amount of the IoMT devices is forecast to reach $20-30 billion by 2020.
Now when the cloud-based solutions becoming a new standard for any business type, the healthcare segment here is not an exception. Driven by the two most critical reasons: to reduce costs and improve the quality of services, medical institutions embrace cloud computing globally.
Since the so-called electronic health records (EHRs) were implemented into hospitals’ infrastructure for immediate access to medical records, specific hardware was used to store all datasets. That caused additional expenses. Cloud computing became a perfect solution here.
Despite some risks, such as data breaches and lack of security, cloud-driven technology has undeniable advantages:
Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) have been mostly used in the gaming industry. In medical practice, AR and VR can be used to train doctors or patients through virtual simulations or provide help during surgical procedures. For example, VR Pain Relief can distract patients from their pain after surgery, by simulating various scenarios. AccuVein provides great help in neurosurgeons and reduces pain experience.
As one of the healthcare trends 2019, the AR/VR/MR market is expected to expand up to $5.1 billion and 3.4 million users globally in a few years, in compliance with Goldman-Sachs.
Perhaps, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are both the most promising innovative technology trends nowadays, designed to change our lives drastically, including the healthcare sector. In compliance with OptumIQ, about 75% of medical companies and institutions are planning to implement AI algorithms into their ecosystems within a few years.
Artificial Intelligence in healthcare has indispensable advantages, beyond our present common understanding.
Even though the biggest problem of mobile apps is data leakage, Mobile Health (mHealth) is still a very promising and popular solution, as people use their smartphones everywhere and at any time. Every healthcare organization is implementing mobile software for its usability. That is one of the reasons why the total global mHealth market is expected to reach $100 billion by 2021, according to Statista.
Healthcare professionals can search for specific info they require at the moment or transfer patients’ records to other departments in a matter of seconds, which can actually save a life in some cases. According to the Wolters Kluwer Health infographic, that’s what medical professionals search while using mobile devices:
Furthermore, patients as well can find valuable benefits from utilizing mobile Health solutions.
Chatbots in healthcare is another field of Artificial Intelligence technology, simulating dialog with a human. Some AI chatbots with ML-driven feature can self-learn and adjust specifically to each human, based on the acquired information, asked questions and the overall user experience. The more you talk, the smarter your chatbot is.
The modern chatbots can be synchronized with other healthcare trends, like IoMT and provide assistance, based on the acquired data. Chatbots are not designed to establish a diagnosis, though, the true goal is to guide people through the facts, optimize health or help to find out whether specific medical attention is required.
Among all other benefits, there are a few, worth to be noted:
Predictive analytics is the procedure of analyzing the patterns of historical data to perform preventive or prediction actions through AI-based software power. With accurate data, healthcare organizations can receive alerts regarding future potential events and build a strategy to predict or prevent disease.
It is especially important when it comes to identifying the first stages of severe diseases like cancer or some chronic ailment. Each day matters here and no time should be wasted. Healthcare entities can identify such conditions, based on many factors including the predicted potential events, avoid long-term health issues and get to treatment as soon as possible.
Since the amount of generated data from various IoMT devices and other healthcare technology solutions is enormous, it’s vital to provide the best security and integrity level and Blockchain is an excellent solution here.
All the patient’s data can be safely transferred without any leakage. Moreover, pharmaceutical manufacturers can register their products in the Blockchain, thus increasing trust, transparency and reducing the number of fake drugs on the global market.
With the advent of IoMT devices, Big Data, telemedicine, and other IT-driven technology, streamlining the whole healthcare segment, the information volume grows each day. When sticking to the cloud-based solutions, we want a high-quality connection, but practically we meet a lot of lags and low-speed downloads/uploads.
The 5G-based network is based on the IEEE 802.11ac wireless networking standard and designed to fix those issues, as well as provide an innovative solution with great power, connection quality and speed. It’s quite obvious, but a high-speed 5G technology is an exact recipe what remote monitoring, artificial intelligence, and the IoMT devices need for transferring large files and keeping a stable connection. As the Statista survey says, 5G is forecast to hit the market by 2020. By 2021, the total amount of 5G connections is expected to be within 20 million and 100 million.
The progress never stands still and it’s really hard to imagine what kind of “miracles” we’ll see in 10-30 years with rapidly developing technology. The healthcare industry is the most crucial among all others and definitely needs the innovative and state-of-the-art solutions only, like the ones we reviewed in this article.
Once you decide to opt for such extremely vital solutions for your business or eager to receive a consultation regarding any IT-driven issue, please don’t hesitate to contact us! ByteAnt is always ready to provide you with a competitive offer or a piece of expert advice.
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