Payers, healthcare systems, and life sciences industries are increasingly turning to health services and technology (HST) providers to assist them to uncover inefficient expenditure and increasing income. HST firms, having serviced customers across a broad range of industries for decades, have developed best-of-breed thinking for a variety of solutions, but they are far from alone in competing for employment.
The market for health digital solutions, which includes logistics, payment solutions, and software platforms, is predicted to develop at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10%. The Healthcare industry might follow the lead and invest more in advanced digital technologies and analytics skills, as well as collaborate with payers and providers to outsource their healthcare software development requirements.
Changing value pools create new opportunities for both HST vendors and rivals. On the basis of prior consolidation waves, it is probable that the payer, healthcare systems, and life sciences sectors will continue to consolidate via payment and delivery innovations, as well as rapid horizontal and vertical mergers, acquisitions, and collaborations.
To thrive and flourish in this new environment as digital transformation initiatives, all HST suppliers may pursue merging ecosystems, expanding their solutions and capabilities into new markets and customer segments. Wherever and however an HST firm decides to grow, building all of the digital and analytics skills will increase the likelihood of success.
Increased data and analytics usage by HST firms might benefit payers and providers by assisting them in reducing wasteful expenditure, promoting faster response to market changes like new regulation, increasing profit margins, and perhaps improving the patient experience.
We will examine different skill sets of technology that are helping several successful healthcare providers today, such as; access to a variety of different types of healthcare data; data aggregation for longitudinal medical records; sophisticated analytics; multidomain knowledge and expertise; and workflow integration.
Digital Health Is The New Healthy
Since 2011, over $39 billion has been invested in digital health through over 2,500 venture capital transactions, including $7.48 billion in 374 such transactions in 2019. (The real amount invested in these medical devices is almost certainly substantially larger, as it often excludes internal innovation funds committed to digital transformation by businesses.) While the majority of this investment is directed toward consumer-centric solutions, such as wearables and scheduling applications, approximately 20% is directed toward electronic health records, data analytics, and other technologies that HST vendors can provide to the industry.
According to McKinsey, revenue is predicted to expand at a rate greater than 10% yearly across all payer market areas, including population-health and medical management, claims management, payment integrity, and risk adjustment. We anticipate yearly revenue growth in the revenue-cycle management and care management categories, as well as quality analytics, in health systems. Market access, research and development support, medical affairs, and patient services are all expanding aspects of the life sciences industry.
Digital Transformation In Healthcare Is The Positive Impact Of Technology In Healthcare
This is why: Telemedicine, medical devices, data management and digital tools along with other digital services powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain-based electronic health record are just a few real examples of how digital transformation is transforming how we engage with healthcare professionals, how our data is shared using the best digital technology till date, and how treatment plans and health outcomes are determined.
The objective here is to streamline physicians’ labor, optimize digital healthcare systems, improve patient outcomes, reduce human error, and reduce costs through excellent online and mobile experiences.
Regrettably, the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors have lagged behind in terms of digital strategy implementation. That is correct!
Indeed, a recent survey found that just 7% of healthcare and pharmaceutical firms have gone digital, compared to 15% of other industries.
Let’s look at the reasons why digital transformation is successfully changing the healthcare industry.
5 Reasons Digital Technology Making It Easy For Healthcare Providers
- Access to a variety of healthcare data sources
Access to a diverse set of data sources is a must for HST suppliers. Without access to the underlying data sets, the analytical skills frequently associated with healthcare IT suppliers are meaningless. The “secret sauce” is found in the diversity of data in terms of its kind (structured and unstructured), volume (number of lives and unique data components), and variation (for example, claims, clinical, and social determinants of health). The more diverse and private the data, the higher the potential for novel insights. Additionally, the diversity of data must be easily accessible: numerous businesses with vast volumes of data continue to suffer due to compartmentalization and silos that prohibit scaled integration. Additionally, it might obstruct the extraction of insights.
Vendors might use both core and supporting data to begin developing a complete picture of overall spending and options for reduction:
- Core-data sources
The conventional perspective of the patient is formed by data from claims, electronic medical records, pharmacies, and laboratories, and serves as the foundation for tangible and trustworthy insights about the patients and patient types represented in the data.
- Supporting-data sources
Social determinants of health (SDoH), patient-reported outcomes, consumer-coverage data, and contract data, among other sources, can help generate a more complete picture of the patient that integrates factors not covered by the traditional health system.
For example, in the risk-adjustment market sector, an HST vendor may develop patient-level risk profiles through the analysis of claims data and electronic medical records and then augment that understanding with SDoH and behavioral-health data. As a well-known example, a smoking habit may raise a patient’s risk of developing cancer.
- Using virtual reality to treat patients
Ten years ago, telling individuals they might alleviate their pain using a gadget resembling a video game would have elicited blank eyes. However, since 2018, Virtual Reality (VR) is the crowning achievement of healthcare’s digital revolution. Its numerous uses are transforming the way patients are treated.
Consider pain treatment. Until recently, physicians were prescribing opioids like candy. Migraines? Postoperative discomfort? I’m going to give you some OxyContin, Vicodin, or Percocet. As a result, the country is today experiencing its biggest drug epidemic in history, costing the economy $78.5 billion each year.
The reality is that millions of individuals continue to suffer from chronic pain. According to the CDC, 50 million persons in the United States experienced chronic pain in 2016. For them, virtual reality is a more effective and safer alternative to medicines. Not only is virtual reality being used to treat pain, but also anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and stroke.
And this is only a sampling of VR’s shown capabilities in the medical area. Additionally, physicians and trainees can utilize virtual reality simulations to sharpen their abilities or plan complex procedures. Additionally, virtual reality headsets might be used to urge users to exercise and assist youngsters with autism in learning how to navigate the environment.
From startups to pharmaceutical behemoths, everyone is banking on virtual reality, and there are data to prove it. By 2025, the global market for virtual and augmented reality in healthcare is estimated to reach $5.1 billion. If you’re a healthcare organization considering investing in digital marketing, you should strongly investigate this technology.
VR is a very effective communication channel that enables you to have a deeper understanding of your clients’ demands and virtually engage them with your products or services.
- Intelligence and skill in several domains
Payers, health systems, and life sciences businesses rely on HST suppliers for more than just data access and analytical muscle. An “enterprise content library” can combine data and insights, enabling the development of greater healthcare-industry knowledge inside and across markets. Vendors in an ecosystem model are likely to require knowledge in a variety of areas to identify patterns and insights that a siloed vendor might miss. This capability extends beyond data access to the development of proprietary analytics and insights across the diverse lines of business served by HST suppliers.
For example, numerous vendors check the flow of claims for payment mistakes in the instance of payment integrity. This evaluation entails the application of medical content (that is, the translation of medical recommendations to identify inappropriate therapies or prescription dose errors) to a payer’s claims flow. Few HST organizations, in our view, have the foresight to combine quality and risk assessments with payment data. This capacity to develop rules reliably based on increasing medical standards while simultaneously providing evidence to justify the rules is a critical differentiator between suppliers.
- Workflow integration
Finally, workflow integration is a point of distinction. This entails allowing for the integration of key business processes and insights into day-to-day activities. When insights are simple to implement, customers are more likely to do so. If insights are not integrated into a customer’s workflow—ideally, at the press of a button—customer personnel must exert more effort, diminishing their usefulness. Solutions that integrate insights into company processes and workflows more smoothly empower employees to discover value.
- Marvels of Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is more than a fad in healthcare’s digital revolution. AI is the pinnacle of medical advancement, and business stakeholders are keen to invest millions in it. By 2025, the healthcare AI-powered tools market is expected to exceed $34 billion, implying that this technology will influence nearly every aspect of the industry.
For the majority of patients, AI in medicine conjures images of Japanese nurse robots. However, there are already several American adaptations, such as Moxi, a pleasant hospital robot meant to aid human nurses with regular duties like supply retrieval and restocking.
Patients are also becoming familiar with chatbots and virtual health assistants, both of which are powered by artificial intelligence. Chatbots may perform a wide variety of functions, ranging from customer service agents to diagnostic instruments and even therapists. Their adaptability results in significant investment. By 2023, the worldwide healthcare chatbots market is expected to grow to $314.3 million from $122 million in 2018.
However, the true potential of AI is best demonstrated in fields such as precision medicine, medical imaging, drug development, and genomics. For example, cancer patients formerly received cookie-cutter therapies with a high risk of failure. These patients now have access to individualized medicines suited to their genetic composition and lifestyle, courtesy of AI’s powerful pattern recognition.
In a word, what AI-powered computer algorithms accomplish in oncology is evaluating millions of pathology pictures of various tumors in order to make extremely accurate diagnoses and forecast the optimal anti-cancer medication combinations. Additionally, in medical imaging diagnostics, this technique assists radiologists in detecting features that are invisible to the naked eye.
Final Words
Combining the competencies is critical for any HST provider, regardless of whether its market is payers, health systems, life-sciences businesses, or a combination of the three. A vendor might leverage these skills to expand its income streams by delving deeper into its existing client base, expanding into other market areas, or combining the two.
This post was last modified on September 26, 2022 6:33 pm