Digital transformation revolutionizes the healthcare industry, improves patient engagement, automates near-treatment processes, and enables remote consultation to influence life expectancy. Let’s take a look at the key technology trends in digital healthcare transformation.
Wearables & Internet of Medical Things
Wearable devices are perhaps a major trend and digital innovation in healthcare today.
According to Juniper Research, spendings on wearable healthcare technology will reach $60 Billion by 2023. Meanwhile, new insights from Allied Market Research reveal that the Internet of Things (IoT) in the healthcare market is expected to reach $332 Billion by 2027.
Connected devices give healthcare professionals more options to collect vital medical data in real-time and provide an accurate assessment of health. In addition, wearable and medical IoT devices are risk analyzers and fall detectors that enable the patients to collect and transmit data.
Today, medical technology companies cover the manufacturing of more than 500,000 different types of medical devices, from wearable external medical devices (skin patches, insulin pumps, and blood glucose monitors) to implanted (pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator devices) and stationary medical devices (home monitoring devices, connected imaging devices, and scanning machines).
Artificial Intelligence & Data Analysis
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analysis have already become a sustainable technology trends in the medical industry. Multiple healthcare organizations are taking advantage of AI and data analysis in their day-to-day operations, logistics, and admin functions. The valuable thing about AI is that technology is being used to improve the diagnostic accuracy of medical practice.
For example, AI-based software developed by Houston Methodist Research Institute ensures the evaluation of mammograms 30 times faster with 99% accuracy, reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies.
In his comment for Forbes, Kaveh Safavi, head of Accenture’s global health practice, said that AI applications may help solve the dilemma of what’s known as the “iron triangle” in healthcare. Accenture, an international consulting company, has also reported the most promising AI applications as future trends in healthcare technology:
- Robot-assisted surgery
- Virtual nursing assistants
- Administrative workflow assistance
- Fraud detection
- Dosage error reduction
- Connected machines
- The clinical trial participant identifier
- Preliminary diagnosis
- Automated image diagnosis
- Cybersecurity.
Augmented Reality
Another current technology trend in healthcare is Augmented Reality (AR).
AR helps patients show more vision of their disease while physicians are enabled to make more precise diagnoses and demonstrate how the treatment will affect the human body in an interactive way.
For example, 3D reconstructions of organs and tumors allow surgeons to reduce risks and improve surgery results. Augmedics, an Israeli start-up, has developed an AR guidance system for spine surgery.
Such digital innovation in healthcare provides surgeons with an “X-ray” vision of the spine. It helps with the accurate guidance of instruments and implants during an intervention.
Here are a couple of extra examples of successful startups using this technology.
Accuvein AR scanner projects and shows the patient’s skin to make accurate intravenous injections.
EyeDecide is an AR app to simulate the impact of specific conditions on a patient’s vision.
Virtual Reality
Currently, the implementation of Virtual Reality (VR) has gone beyond computer games and entertainment, and become a trend in the healthcare industry.
For example, Neuro Rehab VR, in cooperation with physicians, has developed VR training exercises with machine learning to enhance patients’ engagement in physical therapy. A study published in December 2019 reports VR therapy to improve the mobility of children suffering from cerebral palsy.
Another interesting case is the first VR-assisted surgery, which was conducted live in London in 2016. Medical students and trainees could leverage cutting-edge VR innovations in healthcare like ImmersiveTouch as if they had a scalpel in their hands themselves.
VR healthcare technology is also used for relaxing patients, including women in labor, to distract them from painful stimuli and manage pain.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine implies the use of telecommunication technologies to diagnose and treat patients. With the expansion of the Internet, telemedicine is becoming a more affordable digital innovation in healthcare across a number of telemedicine connection types like:
- networked connections – when remote healthcare facilities are linked to larger hospitals. For example, in the USA, there are 200 networked telemedicine programs delivering medical assistance to over 3,000 sites.
- point-to-point connections – they imply connectivity of smaller clinics with central medical facilities.
- monitoring center links for remote patient monitoring.
Telemedicine makes consistent healthcare affordable even in most rural areas.
In 2014, the University of Mississippi Medical Centre (UMMC) conducted a study on the impact of using digital tools to manage diabetes. Patients were given tablets to monitor the course of the illness at home with a healthcare provider to intervene when necessary.
After six months, no hospitalizations and emergency visits regarding diabetes were registered. Now, UMMC’s program includes iPad minis with cellular connectivity, to treat adult and pediatric diabetes, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, adult and pediatric asthma, and high-risk pregnancies.
Telemedicine also makes it possible for physicians to consult each other on a patient’s case regardless of their location or even outsource some medical services like teleradiology.
The latter along with telepsychiatry, teledermatology, teleoncology, telerehabilitation are the most popular telemedicine technology trends in the medical industry. However, telemedicine healthcare technology delivers a variety of services for ambulatory and hospital treatment.
Thus, a gynecologist may provide childbirth counseling through live telemedicine. A general practitioner may discuss lab test results with a patient or see a skin inflammation or a wound. Other conditions that can be treated via telemedicine include allergies, colds, and flu, respiratory infections, sports injuries, rashes, infections.
Robotics
Robotic medical assistants help medical personnel in their routine tasks. Robots perform medical procedures safer and less costly for patients, transport sensitive substances, clean patient rooms, take samples in labs and enter patient data into electronic medical records.
Xenex has created a robot that disinfects hospital environments using pulsed Xenon light bringing to naught the number of healthcare-associated infections.
Robotic digital innovations allow performing surgeries with tiny incisions. For example, Da Vinci Surgery system ensures minimal invasive surgery with a set of advanced instruments and a 3D view of the surgical area.
Another emerging robotic technology in the healthcare industry is exoskeletons.
The devices like Hybrid Assistive Limb use skin sensors to detect signals in the patient’s body and respond with a movement rehabilitating patients after limb disorders, including strokes and spinal cord injuries.
Care robots are more of an upcoming trend in healthcare technology.
Robear is a care robot designed to relieve the burden on medical personnel who has to lift a patient from a bed into a wheelchair up to 40 times a day on average.
Blockchain
Blockchain as a healthcare technology can bring more interoperability for healthcare stakeholders. It has the potential to connect separate systems to generate insights and provide better access to healthcare.
In 2019, IBM and 3 more companies in cooperation with the Federal Drug Administration announced a pilot blockchain project to address the issues of medicines and vaccine distribution in the United States.
Recently, they have shared the results of this program to show how the application of blockchain technology can improve product traceability.
Thus, notifying the stakeholders of a supply chain about a product takes up to three days. The blockchain project participants could verify the product’s status in a few seconds. It improves pharmaceutical safety and transparency in tracking and tracing medicines. In the follow-up, pilot participants also consider blockchain to enable a centralized solution for all manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers and pave the way for common standards and procedures.
5G mobile technology
The fifth generation of cellular wireless technology, or 5G, is expected to deliver massive connection power and faster speeds. In this regard, 5G can become a valuable healthcare technology to change the way medical care is delivered. 5G mobile technology will expand the capacities of the healthcare providers enabling more complex use cases of all the current technology trends in healthcare.
Since 5G coverage is available in remote areas, it will permit the delivery of high-quality video and images 10 to 100 times faster than 4G.
In turn, healthcare technologies fueled by 5G will be critical for data transfer for quicker decisions by physicians. It could set the stage for X-rays and MRIs to operate wirelessly. 5G is also supposed to back up augmented and virtual reality software for training in complex medical scenarios.
5G potential takes the lead in robotic tools for healthcare providers. Last year, in China 5G aided a surgeon’s robotic placement of a brain stimulation device in a patient with Parkinson’s disease located 1,800 miles away.
Bottomline
Digital innovations in healthcare are an important entity, a good touch that enhances the overall level of healthcare services, making them available to a bigger number of patients around the world.
The world healthcare thrives for globalization and improvement. We can see that trend is to make healthcare a more personalized experience with efforts to push into preventive care rather than leaving it as is.
Naturally, we’ll continue to follow the latest trends and share insights with our fellow readers.
- Here, you can find the list of the most interesting and visit-worthy HealthTech conferences in 2020.
- This article gives light to the recent voice and speech recognition solutions for healthcare.
- Sentiment analysis in healthcare. Why do you need it and how does it work?
- Case Study: Development Story of a Healthcare Analytics Platform
