With the accelerating pace of innovation amongst digital health companies, it’s energizing to entertain what lies over the horizon.
As healthcare executives and digital health companies strategize the future of their organizations and industries, we can be sure that the next few years will bring rapid change, challenges, and opportunities. Will the progress in data interoperability combined with AI and ML technologies revolutionize healthcare data insights?
These improving innovations will undoubtedly shape the dynamic landscape for digital health companies for years to come. What we should keep in mind with all of the technological advances is the human experience. Keeping the patient and provider experience at the heart of innovation will move society closer to an empowered healthcare experience.
This article will explore 5 key trends you can expect from digital health companies in 2023.
TL;DR
- Growth of Remote Healthcare
- Increase in Mental Health Awareness and Support
- Personalized Healthcare and Digital Therapeutics
- The Rise of AI and Machine Learning in Digital Health
- Data Interoperability
1. Growth of Remote Healthcare
Call it telehealth, telemedicine, virtual healthcare, or remote patient monitoring (RPM) – healthcare accessibility has dramatically expanded with the spurring of the pandemic.
Adding more convenient care options through remote accessibility helps providers to serve underserved areas. Typically remote regions, many patients and more aging demographics would have to travel hundreds of miles to seek medical attention. Speaking with specialists wouldn’t have been feasible for them. As more healthcare systems adopt remote healthcare and offer expanded services from a regional to a national level, traveling will not be a barrier to receiving second opinions from the nation’s best specialists.
Expect enhanced online patient portals that will ensure a more equitable healthcare experience. An all-in-one platform like RPM-One provides the following:
- A telehealth experience
- Clinical decision support
- On-demand staffing solutions
- A powerful wearable device
With the mission of improving patient outcomes, delivering cost savings, and ending health inequity, RPM-One is a prime example of innovation working for the optimized human healthcare experience.
Also under the remote healthcare umbrella is the advancement in wearable technology. Wearable medical devices track and monitor various health metrics and exercise activity. Already widespread wearables monitor vitals such as heart rate and blood oxygen levels. Expect to see innovative wearables become capable of sophisticated medical scans like an electrocardiogram (ECG) shirt or electroencephalogram (EEG) hat. There are also gloves to aid in steadying tremors by those diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. In addition to physical illness, wearable devices are showing promising potential in detecting signs of mental illness.
2. Increase in Mental Health Awareness and Support
Physical markers such as activity levels, sleep patterns, and heart rate have been proven to correlate with depression and other psychological illnesses. Applications are being developed on wearables and smartphones to measure these indicators for early detection and treatment guidance.
Mental health problems are present throughout society. The taboo of mental illness has lessened in recent years, destigmatizing the topic. With more open discussion of mental health, schools, parents, and the broader public, in general, will become more aware of all the various means to monitor mental health and prevent suicide. One such evidence-based test by Meret Solutions, removes assessment biases to save lives through electronic data capture directly from the patient’s voice.
3. Personalized Healthcare and Digital Therapeutics
Applying remote care and digital therapeutics will lead to an advanced personalized healthcare experience.
Digital Therapeutics are clinically evaluated software applications used to treat specific conditions and disorders. Evidence-based, digital therapeutics enable patients to proactively self-manage symptoms and their health from their homes.
Legislation and insurance coverage will be a hot topic around the legality of approved digital therapeutic prescriptions.
These unique, clinically validated applications will provide unique ways for individuals to take control and make decisions about their health. As patients are more involved in the procedural health process, it’s incentivizing physicians to become more knowledgeable and experienced with the breadth of digital tools on offer.
4. The Rise of AI and Machine Learning in Digital Health
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have already tremendously impacted healthcare in 2023. This is a no-brainer. Sidebar: does AI have a brain?
The applicability of machine learning algorithms to process large data sets at incomprehensible speed will rapidly uncover new methods of diagnosis and pattern recognition. Additionally, AI’s applicability to natural language processing, processing insurance claims, and sifting through medical records, and we can envision the potential impact this will have on humans. Imagine reducing provider burnout by eliminating unnecessary manual paperwork that many providers still utilize. Combine AI with data interoperability, and the entire healthcare ecosystem may be unrecognizable in five years. An enhanced provider experience leads to an improved patient experience.
See Intely’s more in-depth take on AI in Healthcare.
5. Data Interoperability
Tying all of the trends together is data interoperability because without patient data connectivity, scientific advancements in healthcare will not exponentially increase. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with preventative medicine and proactive healthcare.
An interconnected healthcare system of wearables, telehealth software, and digital therapeutic applications, all feeding data into AI or ML algorithms to analyze and interpret large-scale data, will not be as effective without interoperable solutions communicating together. This, of course, demands data to be securely transferred across software applications.
Did you know Intely achieved SOC 2 and HIPAA Type II Compliance?
We’re passionate about data interoperability and energized for all of the potential solutions Intely’s platform will connect in the greater healthcare ecosystem. Intely’s mission is not to deliver one industry-changing platform but to connect an entire generation of industry-changing products.
