Future Healthcare: What to Expect in 2019
By analyzing the products of more than 130 companies that are participating in Future Healthcare 2019, three trends were identified, with virtual healthcare being the first.
Other hot topics disrupting healthcare in 2019 are secure healthcare management platforms and medical gadgets.
What will Future Health care tell us regarding these topics?
Virtual Healthcare: Be Treated Online and Learn How to Perform Surgery with VR
There are two subdomains of virtual integration in healthcare: virtual healthcare consultants, platforms that connect patients and their care teams, and virtual reality healthcare.
Telehealth: Online Pain Management Doctors
Now that the internet has become fast enough and available to over 4.3 billion active users, telehealth is a trendy topic.
By 2022, in the US alone, the number of telehealth visits will double to reach 81 million a year.
Trend Peculiarities
- Remote assistance is still subject to legislative regulations in the case of the negative impact of doctor prescriptions.
- While this is freeing up clinician time, it is, however, requiring clinicians to dedicate parts of their day towards remote care.
- It requires integration with back end systems, e.g. electronic patient records, and the ability for clinicians and patients to update records.
- It tends to work best in locations that have remote and dispersed populations.
- It is dependent upon strong broadband networks to allow for low latency video.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
i-GP. This online general practitioner (GP) can quickly assess a diagnosis and prescribe treatment with the help of experienced UK-trained GPs.
Common conditions treated by the platform include sore throat, cough, female bladder infection, sinusitis, and earache.
GPDQ. This platform allows scheduling doctors appointments online for video and face-to-face consultations. It works from 8 am to 11 pm, 7 days a week, across the UK.
Doctor Care Anywhere. This platform allows video and phone consultations with UK-trained doctors that offer health advice, prescriptions, fit notes and referrals.Synergix Health. Apart from its own brand, Doctor Care Anywhere, the platform serves a variety of white labels.
The Connection between Patients and Carers
The UK accounts for seven million carers, which is as much as London’s population, and this number is rising.
In the USA, the number of caregivers is estimated at almost 67 million people, which can be compared with the combined population of the two largest states, California and Texas. Such an unfavorable situation contributes to the growing demand for software that can reduce the time carers spend with patients yet still alert them if required.
Trend Peculiarities
- To provide reliable data, the software needs to be integrated with healthcare gadgets, specifically wearable devices.
- In the case of seriously ill people, the real attendance of carers is required.
- Data privacy must be kept during data transferring and storing.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
MyLiferaft. This application stores a patient’s health information so that it can be shared with hospital employees and carers, and reminds patients of assessments and appointments.
BeSure Online. This cloud-based platform for stroke prevention and rehabilitation connects senior people with their healthcare teams, which consist of care providers and family members.
It collects data, including from wearable devices in healthcare, analyses it, and predicts emerging problems.
Virtual Reality in Healthcare
Usage of virtual reality applications in healthcare, especially for teaching goals, is another trend in 2019.
In addition, VR can be used for rehabilitation in balance and gait, which has been scientifically confirmed.
Trend Peculiarities
- Virtual reality healthcare for surgeons remains a budget-sucking technology with a disputable ROI.
- Due to a general lack of knowledge, especially across developing countries, the technology isn’t catching on.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
Digital Surgery. This surgery simulation app features more than 200 procedures across 14 specialties. Immersive Rehab. This virtual reality platform delivers an interactive physiotherapy program to enhance neuro and physical rehabilitation.
Healthcare IT Infrastructure
Another part of healthcare to be disrupted with software development is healthcare IT infrastructure. This technology allows managing both operational processes inside of the separate hospitals and recreational centers and connections between them and patients.
Medical Appointment Scheduling Software
Since 34% of medical appointments are made after-hours, being able to schedule them online becomes crucial for healthcare providers.
By the end of 2019, 66% of healthcare providers will offer online scheduling, which is expected to become the key driver for demand for medical appointment scheduling software.
Trend Peculiarities
There are difficulties associated with the integration of external medical appointment scheduling software into the internal CRM/ERP system.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
Medintu. This platform allows appointing meetings with doctors, including those specializing in alternative medicine, hospitals, and diagnostic centers.
Secure Data Processing and Storing
There are a variety of tasks that involve data.
First, medical data must be collected and securely stored.
Second, this data needs to be analyzed to deliver pivot analytics for different types of predictions, from emergency cases to the time required for a doctor appointment.
Trend Peculiarities
- There are no generally accepted sources for impeccable data as well as tools to clean it.
- The exponential growth of healthcare data creates challenges for both storing it, from the budget point of view, and maintaining its privacy.
- In the wake of increased data breaches, healthcare data security becomes the number one priority.
- Since healthcare data can be used by machine learning, it needs to be standardized regardless of its source.
- Considering data volumes, the possibility of accessing the right data instantly becomes crucial for healthcare providers.
- Data visualization is another point that must be solved, especially when consultants work with a huge number of different parameters.
- Data is non-static and comes from different sources, so it needs to be updated while remaining unique and consistent.
- Since a variety of vendors need access to the same data, it needs to be easy-sharable, with the anticipated privacy concerns.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
MedicalChain. This blockchain-driven platform creates a unique, secure, user-focused electronic health record.
Moreover, MedicalChain enables the fast and transparent exchange and usage of medical data.
Wearable Technology in Healthcare and IoT
When wearable healthcare monitoring devices and healthcare gadgets become not only available but affordable for ordinary people, wearable technology in healthcare comes to the forefront.
Every year, the number of healthcare IoT device installations grows by approximately 25%. And 2019 isn’t an exception.
Trend Peculiarities
- Apart from recording healthcare data, wearable devices in healthcare are expected to integrate this information with software that can analyze it and make the corresponding predictions.
- There is a variety of wearable healthcare monitoring devices, so sometimes it becomes tedious to control the health state with a few such gadgets simultaneously.
Projects to Be Introduced at Future Healthcare
OLO by Sight. This AI-backed hardware enables conducting lab-quality blood analysis without a lab.
EVA System. This FDA-cleared colposcope provides high-quality, medical-grade image and video capture with secure online data management and services.
Cardiomo Care. This heart health monitoring ecosystem features heart rate variability, the level of cardio stress, vital energy activity, and motion, including step count.
The system consists of a wearable device that estimates your health parameters and transfers them to your smartphone. Then, the system visualizes these parameters and delivers results through either an app or a web-browser.SoeMac. This medical device provides an alternative therapy by energizing oxygen. This allows you to enhance your sleep and fix breathing problems. Cosinuss. This in-ear sensor provides your real-time monitoring of heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, oxygen level, blood pressure changes, and respiration rate.
Technological Aspects
There is no novelty across the technology stack used for healthcare software development. However, there are challenges that need to be taken into consideration while developing health-tech apps.
Keep Data Private
No matter where data comes from and how it can be shared across different parties, its privacy must be protected. This relates to any healthcare data regardless of a patient’s location.
As a result, data privacy and security is a top priority that must be taken into consideration while designing a healthcare solution.
Manage Integrations
As more wearable devices in healthcare appear, and as various software solutions come to the market, integration of all these data sources and their processing domains becomes more complicated.
Otherwise, fragmented data can’t be compared and analyzed, which makes it less valuable from a medical point of view.
The Benefit from Big Data and Machine Learning
While collection and secure storage of health data is one concern, the analysis of this data becomes another weak spot.
With the help of big data and machine learning, it’s possible to receive valuable predictions based on thousands of similar patients.
These predictions may include the probability of emergency cases, diagnosis, effective treatment, and much more.
It’s also possible to make different alerts, automatically appoint meetings with doctors, and even estimate the time needed for such a meeting in every single case.
The more data sources included in such a system, the more accurate these results can be.
Is There Room for New Healthcare Solutions?
The number of solutions that operate across health-tech is mind-boggling, but there is enough room for newcomers.
Many solutions have geographic limitations, which is connected to strict regulations applied to healthcare worldwide.
In addition, since there are a lot of different parties that operate in the healthcare industry, most solutions can’t target all participants. This is another factor where new healthcare technologies can help.
All these confirm possibilities that can be unveiled by new health-tech companies.
However, since the entry barrier here is high, don’t forget to find a reliable partner for this digital transformation journey.
With its proven track record and active participation in half a dozen different health-tech projects, Innovecs can support your team along the entire development process.
Healthcare Is on a Path of Digital Transformation
By connecting different types of participants, tasks, and operations, healthcare becomes one of those industries, with a considerable number of new software solutions and IoT devices.
In the wake of the upcoming Future Healthcare Exhibition and Conference, we have highlighted and discussed the three directions that are expected to be the most trendy over 2019.
If you are on a first-name basis with health-tech but need a partner in the healthcare software development, we are here to help.