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The Digitization and Consumerization of Healthcare
The Digitization and Consumerization of Healthcare

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We are living through a renaissance in healthcare. There are myriad opportunities driven by digitalization, aging demographics, growing demand for personalized care and new growth opportunities in emerging markets. At the same time, there is uncertainty, new regulations, changing healthcare dynamics and an increasingly competitive scenario. This challenging environment requires players in the healthcare ecosystem to reduce costs, run efficient operations and innovate quickly. In response, the healthcare industry is embarking on a transformation journey as it seeks to reimagine patient experiences, transform care delivery, and innovate through targeted and personalized medicine. A wide array of digital tools and technology will enable this transformation. This paper examines the opportunities for digitalization of healthcare, the potential challenges for digital adoption and a possible approach for enterprises to navigate to their next in the digital journey.

The Opportunity:

Traditionally, the healthcare industry has lagged in digital adoption compared to other industries like retail, telecom, hospitality and media.  However, it is now quickly adopting, supported by advances in medical technology like wearables, robotic surgery, and AI in diagnostics. Patients now seek “anytime-anywhere” care through digital channels while expecting consumer-grade experiences and subsequently expecting it to seamlessly blend into their non-healthcare routines. While digital adoption was fast becoming an imperative even in the pre-COVID era, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated these shifts, simultaneously increasing the need for healthcare and making it harder to access. Although many aspects of life may return to normal in the post-pandemic world, aspects of telemedicine and high-frequency care delivered in a decentralized manner are likely to remain unchanged, strengthened by patient preference and a reduction in system-wide healthcare delivery cost.

There are multiple ways in which digital technologies are transforming healthcare including,

  • The use of big data to reduce medication errors, for preventive healthcare, and decision support systems for both operations management and clinical decision-making not only enables efficient enterprises but could also significantly reduce mortality rates and improve patient experiences.
  • AR/VR can be used for treatment, simulated training for surgeries, patient engagement and rehabilitative therapy, and these new possibilities promise to deliver better outcomes than the existing patient care approaches.
  • Consumerization of healthcare through wearables and connected platforms enables patients to access real-time information about their health, empowering them to focus on prevention and mitigation.
  • AI that drives everything from virtual health assistants to diagnostic tools to precision medicine to accelerated drug discovery is lowering the cost of care and enabling more targeted and personalized care with better outcomes.
  • Blockchain brings a possibility of better electronic health records shared across the ecosystem which could eliminate wrong diagnosis, report latency and delayed treatment, reduce the overall cost of care, and dramatically improve the patient experience.
  • Digital platforms powered by the next generation 5G networks will offer unparalleled patient experiences for online consulting, telemedicine and tele-robotic surgery, enabling access to quality healthcare to millions worldwide.

Roadblocks to digital adoption

New technologies and opportunities come with inherent challenges to systemic change, such as

  1. It takes significant investments to create digital solutions, yet in many applications, there is no clear path to return on investment.
  2. Ability to find the right talent – while medical native companies provide user insights, development rigour, and the validation required to elicit confidence in high-stakes systems, they often lack the technical prowess of digital native firms that specialize in efficiently establishing digital platforms. Finding the right mix of digital and medical domain expertise is the holy grail for this ecosystem.
  3. Regulatory hurdles and inherent inertia in the system – Digital technologies including AI and machine learning have not yet been widely deployed in the healthcare industry. Significant barriers to widespread implementation and adoption remain, including human factors usability, regulatory pathways for adaptive systems, cultural resistance to trusting the systems, and technical limitations like bandwidth and localized processing power.

An approach to deal with the adoption challenge

  1. Collaborate with players who bring in complementary value propositions to reduce the quantum of investments required. Explore new business models that also lower capital expenditure.
  2. Focus on product vision and roadmap while being open to partnerships on R&D and engineering. Explore global partnerships to source talent that brings technology and engineering skills to complement the medical domain skills already present with the medical native companies.  Utilize globally distributed models of execution to significantly lower the total cost of ownership while accelerating time to market.
  3. Product adoption depends on an intuitive, delightful end-user experience that blends seamlessly into the context of its use.  Product designers and integrated human factors engineers are even more critical to the development process now than ever before. 
  4. Ensure the digital solutions establish trust between the user and the application or device even though regulatory hurdles exist. The players in the healthcare ecosystem need to work with regulatory bodies around the world to develop flexible but robust evaluation metrics for adaptive technologies so that enterprise R&D units can be confident in their innovation investments.
  5. Establish monetization models clearly because building out digital and data infrastructure carries a cost. These models should guide every aspect of solution building.
  6. Consider the risk of data security and privacy breaches. Providers, patients, and payors will not accept medical products unless they are inherently safe, effective, and secure. Ensure that this is integral to the solution and not as an afterthought.

 

Concluding thoughts

While there are challenges to be overcome to drive the digitalization of healthcare, there is a significant opportunity to boost revenues and make a difference in how patient care is conceptualized, delivered and experienced.

 

About the Authors

AVP

1. Rohit Purushottham is an Associate Vice President and Practice Head for the Consumer and Medical Devices Practice, Infosys Ltd

General Manager

2. Ben Ko is a General Manager with Kaleidoscope Innovation™, an Infosys subsidiary. 


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