According to a survey, people spend on average 3 to 5 hours on their phone per day for personal use. Digital has taken a huge role in our daily lives, but the #digitaltransformation of healthcare is much slower. This delay is the result of the obligation in the field of health to consider three elements: compliance with many regulations, confidentiality and security.
With COVID, that situation has changed. Faced with this new obstacle, digitizing our health care system has become essential and attracts many investors and business promoters.
The past
Medical and #healthcare systems were initially based on biology, health professionals performed operational interventions, and #pharmaceuticalmolecules prevented and treated some diseases.
Technology, digital and #AI have become an integral part of healthcare and have led to important advances. But for a long time this was limited to radiographic images, diagnostics and lab results or prescription and billing software in pharmacies. One of them, and certainly the most important #innovation, is the sequencing of the human genome, which makes it possible to diagnose, synthesize drugs, study paternity and many other uses. The first one took 13 years and cost more than $3 billion in 2003. Thanks to the new technology and advances, today it only takes a few hours and costs $1000.
On the other hand, over the past few decades, advances in health care have focused on the diseases and not on the patient, who is now the center of the healthcare system. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, once the patient went home from a medical appointment, we could not have easy follow-up on their condition or the correctness of their treatment until the next appointment. We also have seen many inequalities in access to the healthcare system, in the United States more than 28 millions people don’t have access to healthcare.
The present
In 2021, $29.1 billion was raised in digital health and $6 billion in Q1 of 2022. In the first half of 2022, digital health startups raised $10.3 billion only in USA.
With remote medical appointments, data management, appointment scheduling and advice on how to better manage one's illness, these various issues are partially resolved. As a result, many governments and #venturecapital are #investing in this area, for example, the Australian government has invested $90 million to fund digital health technologies.
Also included in this broad landscape of innovation are devices that assist in surgical operations, such as the Flex® Robotic System, a medical version of the Technion snake originally designed to rescue survivors of natural disasters, now used in medicine for sensitive spinal cord surgery.
Through digitization, we have access to new information when the patient is at home, whether the patient is good or bad, and to make the necessary decisions. We also allow access to care for more people, no more need to travel, no more need to wait for hours in a waiting room, no more losing of medical records, and also information availability accessible to all.
Many #startups have been able to bring new solutions to improve with digital the daily life of patient or also to improve the tools for public health, for example, researchers working in the field of public health have been using data from Google search results and social networks like Instagram to predict the spread of infectious diseases.
The future
Large digital industries and startups are increasingly present in the healthcare sector and bring innovative #business models and new visions to a field that has long been limited.
Today, Tech is moving towards a new medicine that brings together nanotechnologies, robotics, deep-tech, and software, to improve both the life of the patient, but also facilitate and make the practice of the work of health care personnel more efficient.
AI will thus take a major place in the medicine of tomorrow, for a better understanding of physiological and pathological processes. To continue this path, the reliability and security of these technologies must be flawless and of course #entrepreneurs must not forget the ethical side which is essential in health fields. This medical transformation will also have to be accompanied by a transformation of mentalities and a confidence of the patients and the care staff towards digital.
Faced with increasingly innovative tools that look like science fiction yarns, such as the Devinnova patch that can predict a heart attack or a stroke, the mentality of patients will have to change to open up to new perspectives.
Conclusion
The future of Digital healthcare is highly promising and still has a lot of surprises in store for us, however, one thing is already almost certain, digital will be an integral part of tomorrow's medicine. Investors making the right choices at the right times could turn incredible profits as the industry develops.
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