I bet that the majority of you think about health when something bad happens: either you swallowed your leg during a small walk or your skin turned to a different color and you started to panic. The Healthcare system works the same way that your mind does. It is ready to cure you when you are ill. However, can it efficiently help you stay healthy when you do not urgently need cure? Can it help you not to feel sick at all?
It does not. But there is a path of technological advances that will lead us all to this “sickless future” and this road is called preventive healthcare. Not only technology drives the development of that industry, but also the growing awareness and consciousness of people. The main challenge is to create a fruitful environment for this development. To enhance it a bit I will show several examples of your future health: in hospitals and at home.
The first example is your experience with hospital visits. Even before you enter the building all your personal data is pre-entered into the system via chatbot. You know exactly what time your doctor will be free because you can see the updates in the virtual waiting room on the number of people in the queue. You know who you want to visit and what for because you have consulted with general specialists on the telemedicine (e-health platform) beforehand. All the reports on your health indicators are securely and automatically stored on the cloud and you can access them anytime you need. This is the experience of Smart hospitals, they are technologically advanced, automated and provide pleasant customer experience even for the “non-sick”. This hospital is full of IoMT (Internet of Medical things) and instead of huge tubes, microsensors enter your body and report everything they see insight (Gonda, 2018). Moreover, Smart hospitals ensure data connectivity across all healthcare stakeholders: you, doctors, nurses, your insurance company, research centers, medical supply companies, and pharmacies (Chen, Baur, Stepniak and Wang, 2019). Talking about pharmacies, thanks to the connectivity you can order prescribed medicines online! Furthermore, Smart hospitals enable private enterprises to deliver healthcare (D’Arville, Mehra, Boulton and Kapur, 2020).
One example of a private company that can provide you health services at home is Thriva. In fact, it is a company whose mission is to build a culture of preventive health. To accomplish this they provide customers regular medical tests and ongoing analytics on the most important health indicators. So you already can watch your health while sitting on the sofa. What else? Artificial Intelligence solutions installed inside your house could collect data on how you move and what is the color of your skin and make real-time diagnostics of your health conditions (Rob Gonda, 2019). Your AI can be connected with your Apple-watch and other wearables measuring the level of sugar in your blood. All of them can be connected to your diet app, and your sleep app, providing you with personalized recommendations and constantly adjusting your health!
It is almost there…
References:
Gonda, R., 2019. Council Post: How Technology Could Transform Preventative Medicine. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/07/19/how-technology-could-transform-preventative-medicine/#4e3761a45df1> [Accessed 15 September 2020].
Gonda, R., 2018. Council Post: Revolutionizing Health Care Part II: Changing Customer Experiences Through Delocalized Care. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/08/23/revolutionizing-health-care-part-ii-changing-customer-experiences-through-delocalized-care/#55293b74671b> [Accessed 15 September 2020].
Chen, B., Baur, A., Stepniak, M. and Wang, J., 2019. Finding The Future Of Care Provision: The Role Of Smart Hospitals. [online] Healthcare Systems & Services. Available at: <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/finding-the-future-of-care-provision-the-role-of-smart-hospitals> [Accessed 15 September 2020].
D’Arville, L., Mehra, S., Boulton, A. and Kapur, V., 2020. Heeding The Call To Reinvent Healthcare Delivery. [online] Bain & Company. Available at: <https://www.bain.com/insights/heeding-the-call-to-reinvent-healthcare-delivery/> [Accessed 15 September 2020].
Thriva – Track and improve your health. 2020. Thriva – Track And Improve Your Health. [online] Available at: <https://thriva.co/> [Accessed 15 September 2020].
Hi Ekatarina, interesting post about the healthcare industry. I think no one is against a healthier society!
A concerns you probably already thought of yourself and might shine some light on in a comment:
Privacy. With current movements in the market (more privacy-consciousness), and complains to companies as Facebook regarding this issue. How do you see possibilities for a holistic solution to the healthcare market, with for example IoT devices that collect a massive amount of (very sensitive) data? Shouldn’t we wait for a breakthrough in the area of data-infrastructure, for this to be realistic? Should this be a governmental institute, or will private companies come up with this solution?
Quite a few (big) questions, but look forward to your ideas!
Hi, Abele!
I will cover your concerns with two options that are really hard to implement:
1) trust
2) technology
I am in favour of the first one when security issues in medicine are concerned. I do not really understand why one should be afraid that his/her sensitive medical data will be exposed and used to harm. Maybe I live in pink sunglasses or I do not yet have an important enough role to be concerned on whether everyone does or does not know my cholesterol level. Are you concerned? I do understand that companies, individuals and government can use the medical data either to manipulate people or help them. And it is for now impossible to control. The whole world with its pitfalls and injustices needs to be changed. It is a really long and complicated process of changing individual perception.
That is why the second technological option is way more viable. For instance, at the moment blockchain can partially guarantee the security of your data (if you use it wisely and you are secured on other levels). Though, blockchain has its very serious scalability limitation, that still needs solution. Here I want to highlight one important feature of the healthcare – it needs interoperable systems and also it needs solutions that enable patients to securely transfer they data from one place to another. I believe that a technology or tokens that can provide this feature are NFTs. You can read on them here: https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/nonfungible-tokens..
These are the tokens that are unique and can ensure transferability. They were already used in Gaming, Arts and Luxury segment by Louis Vuitton.
The article is really interesting! Hope you will like it!
Hi Ekaterina!
It happens that the healthcare industry is indeed the one that I am most interested in! Glad to see your blog post mentioned the example of IoMT (Internet of Medical things) for an entire medical treatment process. Also in the upper reply section, you mentioned that the blockchain technology can always make the positive change in terms of privacy issue, for which I couldn’t agree more.
I happened to read a paper regarding the data privacy issue when applying modern technologies. It mentions the overall methodology on prevention and regulations on thefts of personal medical identities and data permission, etc. might present an overview .
Some other innovation technologies bring changes to the healthcare industry you might be also interested:
(1): AI outlook in Healthcare:
(2): Augmented and VIrtual Reality in Healthcare:
Best,
Jiayun
Oops, don’t know why the provided URLs are missing:
(1): AI outlook in Healthcare:
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/life-sciences-and-health-care/articles/future-of-artificial-intelligence-in-health-care.html
(2): Augmented and VIrtual Reality in Healthcare: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160316005923/en//Global-Augmented-Reality-Virtual-Reality-HealthcareIndustry