How MedTech Shapes the Digitalization of Healthcare
Digitalization has changed our every day lives in many ways – and at breathtaking speed, too. It influences the way we work and live, and for most of has become an integral part of how we interact and communicate. In the field of healthcare, digitalization also is a force to be reckoned with and has a lot in store for healthcare providers and patients a like. To healthcare providers, digitalization presents with possibilities that were either unthinkable or at least very visionary just a few years back: It means that their global peers will always be just a click away and that they will gain actionable insights from big data. Patients benefit from accurate diagnosis – however remote their location might be. Rare diseases might be diagnosed earlier and last but not least, there will be a stronger focus on the patient experience.But let's take a step back to assess how all this comes together. How to connect the pieces of the puzzle and what is the role of MedTech companies in all this?
Emerging Markets: Accessibility through Telemedicine
When thinking about digitalization in healthcare, topics such as the Electronic Health Record come to mind and those are tied to developed countries. But digitalization is by no means exclusive. For emerging markets, it might help to save costs in the long run. We are observing how digitalization can pave the way to better healthcare access for larger populations – by connecting remote and urban areas. I’m talking about Telemedicine, which allows for the remote diagnosis of a patient’s condition. Take teleradiology as a specific example. Patient and radiologist don't need to be in the same place for an accurate diagnosis. A nurse can take a patient's medical image and send it to a hub in a larger city, featuring highly trained radiologists for reading and diagnosis. This allows for a fast and reliable diagnosis without requiring the patient to travel – which would be expensive and highly inconvenient for an ailing person. MedTech companies can further assist this development by coming up with easy-to-operate and robust equipment and a focus on staff training as well as reliable service packages to ensure maintenance. Similar things are happening in the field of laboratory diagnostics. Central labs collect samples from collection points in remote areas and allow for an efficient and timely analysis of those samples. Here, a higher degree of lab automation provides for more
accurate diagnosis and allows for effective utilization of resources.
Interoperability and Innovation
Looking at large imaging devices which generate a lot of data, in the past, a lack of interoperability has made it difficult to utilize those data for the benefit of patients and healthcare providers alike. In fact, studies suggest that 80 percent of health data is unstructured and stored in hundreds of forms such as lab results, images, and medical transcripts. How to use this big data effectively and channel it for the benefit of the healthcare provider? This question is for MedTech companies to answer. The answer lies in digital solutions that allow aggregating and visualizing imaging data for analytics and enable collaboration and sharing of insights in real time. A special opportunity lies in cloud-based systems that allow healthcare professionals to identify improvement potential, e.g. regarding the utilization of their imaging devices or the associated radiation doses. Further more, those cloud-based systems furnish healthcare providers with progressive applications for clinical and operational bench marking and performance improvement and data and knowledge exchange with experts beyond their own institution. One intriguing example certainly is that of rare diseases. Worldwide, an estimated 350 million people suffer from rare diseases where diagnosis and treatment is particularly difficult due to a lack of reference cases. Here, a digital ecosystem with a large pool of data might be useful in the future. Users could also identify reference cases with similar patterns.
Patient empowerment through data
Something that has come with the overall topic of digitalization itself is that patients are increasingly informed - they collect their own data and are much more empowered when seeking medical consultation. Patients can also collect their own data at home, through blood pressure devices or scales that are connected to mobile phones and subsequently share those with a physician who then in turn can look at the data remotely. This saves the patient valuable time.
Artificial Intelligence and Patient Experience
And yet more visionary things are happening in the field of MedTech. Take Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computer aided diagnosis (CAD) is AI powered and already today can help physicians delivering accurate diagnoses, for example in the case of pulmonary nodules. Here, special software is designed to support radiologists in conforming the presence or absence of lung lesions and aides the user to assess nodule changes in their growth. Similar features are available for the assessment of breast lesions in mammography. And there is a lot more potential for CAD in the future to support timely and accurate diagnoses. Also, new types of research visualization technologies allow for 3D photo-realistic images to be produced of the human body using data from imaging systems such as a Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner. The technology’s main benefit lies in improving planning for surgery, as well as part of communication between doctors and the dialog with patients to improve the patient experience.
Having outlined the above, there are some strong examples of how digitalization has gained foothold in the field of healthcare. And yet, they only give us a glimpse into what the healthcare world will look like in the future. More connected, more transparent and with even more remote diagnosis options. Healthcare infrastructure will continue to improve and better care will be available to more people at affordable cost.
Interoperability and Innovation
Looking at large imaging devices which generate a lot of data, in the past, a lack of interoperability has made it difficult to utilize those data for the benefit of patients and healthcare providers alike. In fact, studies suggest that 80 percent of health data is unstructured and stored in hundreds of forms such as lab results, images, and medical transcripts. How to use this big data effectively and channel it for the benefit of the healthcare provider? This question is for MedTech companies to answer. The answer lies in digital solutions that allow aggregating and visualizing imaging data for analytics and enable collaboration and sharing of insights in real time. A special opportunity lies in cloud-based systems that allow healthcare professionals to identify improvement potential, e.g. regarding the utilization of their imaging devices or the associated radiation doses. Further more, those cloud-based systems furnish healthcare providers with progressive applications for clinical and operational bench marking and performance improvement and data and knowledge exchange with experts beyond their own institution. One intriguing example certainly is that of rare diseases. Worldwide, an estimated 350 million people suffer from rare diseases where diagnosis and treatment is particularly difficult due to a lack of reference cases. Here, a digital ecosystem with a large pool of data might be useful in the future. Users could also identify reference cases with similar patterns.
MedTech companies can further assist this development by coming up with easy-to-operate and robust equipment and a focus on staff training as well as reliable service packages to ensure maintenance
Patient empowerment through data
Something that has come with the overall topic of digitalization itself is that patients are increasingly informed - they collect their own data and are much more empowered when seeking medical consultation. Patients can also collect their own data at home, through blood pressure devices or scales that are connected to mobile phones and subsequently share those with a physician who then in turn can look at the data remotely. This saves the patient valuable time.
Artificial Intelligence and Patient Experience
And yet more visionary things are happening in the field of MedTech. Take Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computer aided diagnosis (CAD) is AI powered and already today can help physicians delivering accurate diagnoses, for example in the case of pulmonary nodules. Here, special software is designed to support radiologists in conforming the presence or absence of lung lesions and aides the user to assess nodule changes in their growth. Similar features are available for the assessment of breast lesions in mammography. And there is a lot more potential for CAD in the future to support timely and accurate diagnoses. Also, new types of research visualization technologies allow for 3D photo-realistic images to be produced of the human body using data from imaging systems such as a Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner. The technology’s main benefit lies in improving planning for surgery, as well as part of communication between doctors and the dialog with patients to improve the patient experience.
Having outlined the above, there are some strong examples of how digitalization has gained foothold in the field of healthcare. And yet, they only give us a glimpse into what the healthcare world will look like in the future. More connected, more transparent and with even more remote diagnosis options. Healthcare infrastructure will continue to improve and better care will be available to more people at affordable cost.
