In the time of a fast-developing world, which is full of innovative decisions, many sectors shine with potential, and one of them is digital health. Members of our medical team, who were privileged attendees at events such as the MedInfo 2023 congress, European OHDSI and APAC symposiums, are truly happy to share their exclusive insights from those conferences with you in this article. So, welcome to a future of healthcare — vibrant, digital, and full of exclusivity.
In such a transformative era, technology and healthcare are uniting to absolutely change the way healthcare services are delivered and how patients experience them. They're creating new ways to treat patients, care for them, and handle information. These fresh concepts show us how much digital health is progressing. Though the trends we see in 2023 were present in the past few years, however, in this year, they are more advanced and modified.
Let's take a closer look at a few of the important digital healthcare trends in 2023:
The healthcare industry is shifting from generic solutions in favor of personalized ones. Digital health products are more focused now on addressing the specific needs and dealing with specific issues, preferences, and histories of individual patients, ensuring both personal and efficient care.
The medical industry is departing from the approach of merely diagnosing and prescribing the treatment. It is more focused now on the prevention of diseases and their consequential effects. By using AI and ML, we can process the data and make predictions about the health either of a patient or population. Also, it is important to mention that technologies such as digital therapeutics and real-time patient monitoring are enhancing patient outcomes and engagement.
When different health solutions are available for the medical field, it's important for them to work together, and data standardization is a key here.
The patient data can come from various sources: insurance systems, electronic health records, surveys, clinical trials, etc. This data needs to be put into a common and more standardized format to make sense of it all. Organizations leading in standardization are working on structuring the data better, which allows decision-makers to get evidence-based insights. This knowledge is crucial for data-driven decisions, not just in the medical treatment aspects but also in managing resources like finances and personnel.
Remote healthcare solutions, from video communications to telemedicine consultations, are absolutely changing what accessibility in healthcare means. Regardless of geographical location, patients can connect with healthcare professionals and get consultations while healthcare quality stays at a high level. This also allows doctors to gather for counseling sessions and create recommendations on laboratory test results.
In conclusion, the current trends in digital health products show how the approaches in the industry are changing: the mobile apps for remote vitals monitoring are being implemented, and telepath platforms are becoming more insightful with the features they have. For example, matching patients to doctors, analytics, health assistant bots and E-prescriptions.
These trends not only show the present condition of digital health but also provide an insight into the future perspective of the industry.
Right now, we're on the edge of new opportunities, and some really cool ideas are leading the way and changing how we think about healthcare. The innovative solutions now aim not only to respond to current needs but also to address the challenges that can arise in the future. Let's explore them:
Beyond the simplistic step counters and basic heart rate monitors, the development of wearables is a great decision in medical tech. These devices continually track physiological parameters, such as heart and respiratory rate, urinary bladder fullness, blood oxygen level, glucose level, and even stress markers, painting a picture of a patient's health in real-time.
There is a consistent flow of health data from wearables, so AI-powered platforms step in to analyze a lot of information. Such predictive analytics can detect irregularities, sending early alerts to users or medical professionals and, therefore, preventing potential health crises.
Leveraging no-code ecosystems, innovators are designing digital health tools that address specific patient needs, especially in the realm of mental and behavioral health. These tools do not offer generic advice; they create practical advice based on evidence.
By integrating AI, digital therapeutic platforms can now provide personalized regimens that adjust in real time based on patient feedback and take into account a huge variety of factors (e.g. COVID-19, epilepsy, schizophrenia, child age).
Ensuring that health data remains in the right hands is crucial. Many platforms now grant access based on robust digital identity verification, bolstering security and ensuring data privacy compliance with acts such as HIPPA and GDPR.
Secure digital platforms are built to recognize participants like doctors, managers, and patients. Such recognition is made possible through the use of blockchain technology – old, but still effective one.
In essence, the latest ideas in digital health innovation aren't just about advanced tech but also about precision and trust. These innovations show a promising trajectory where technology elevates patient care, data security, and personalized treatment to a new level, simplifying the work for doctors and saving their time.
The digital health landscape, fueled by rapid technological advancements and a surge in patient-centric initiatives, has presented a slew of novel opportunities and pathways. As healthcare continues to integrate with technology, several potential trajectories are crystallizing.
The integration of AI-powered analytics into Electronic Health Record (EHR) software is a game changer. Such integration can bring promising results by assisting clinicians in making informed decisions based on patterns and previous case studies.
Such tools as AI-operated symptom checkers and AI-enhanced medical alarms/alerts are designed to supplement healthcare professionals, and they can quickly assess initial symptoms, promptly address the needs of critical patients, and send alerts for urgent conditions such as seizures or hypo-/hyperglycemia in patients at home. This allows to ensure that patients receive timely and appropriate care, thereby optimizing the healthcare process.
More than ever, there's a pressing need to develop platforms enabling collaboration and system management, including community-driven approach in setting standards. They're designed for seamless patient care, interoperability, real-time data analytics, and personalized treatment protocols. . Such platforms would not only enable efficient communication and data sharing among healthcare providers, but also empower patients and healthcare decision-makers with data-driven insights and remote monitoring capabilities.
Implementing such opportunities will not only level up patient care but also create a progressive path for the global healthcare industry. While the future ahead may be challenging, it's equally rich with solutions, where digitalization is playing a crucial role.
At the conferences and events, we gained firsthand insights into how leading organizations within different communities are managing the challenges and realizing opportunities in digital health:
Synthetic Health Data Creation: To address concerns of privacy and data availability, the generation of synthetic health data steps into the game and becomes a trend. This enables more extensive testing and research without compromising patient privacy.
Using NLP: Many companies use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to convert, process, and structure unstructured data. This process is truly helpful in mapping, ETL operations, phenotyping, and more.
**Community Management: **The communities are constantly growing, and management of member interactions and contributions is crucial. Many organizations rely on metrics to track and analyze contributors' activities, creating a more engaged and productive ecosystem.
**Cost-Effectiveness: **A significant interest within the community arose around evaluating the cost-effectiveness of healthcare solutions. This ensures that medical interventions are beneficial and optimally utilized, be it in terms of resources or a doctor's time.
Data Standardization is highly important due to the variety of medical data types. Leading organizations prioritize the alignment of these diverse datasets to enable more comprehensive analytics and well-informed decision-making. For example, the OMOP Common Data Model structures the data into specialized tables, fostering efficient big-data operations and analytics.
Observational Studies: The extraction of evidence-based knowledge is highly important for research purposes. One approach to achieve this is through observational studies on vast datasets. To support this, there's a rising trend in developing tools specifically tailored for surveys and research.
Ontology Platforms: There is a need to create web resources that aggregate different mappings and terminological standards, making them more interoperable for other participants of the research. This simplifies data-sharing and collaboration.
We feel truly excited and hopeful about the progress in digital health! Our Medical team is happy to contribute to the expansive digital health community and be able to share the insights gleaned from the events we’ve visited. Our journey together with different experiences and knowledge shows the transformative phase we're in. Patient-centered approaches, innovations in remote healthcare solutions, and the importance of data standardization forms the 2023 digital health landscape, and it's vast and dynamic.
Let's lead the way in digital health's future together!
