The race to reinvent healthcare
September 28, 2018
September 28, 2018
The fundamental structures of the healthcare industry are being challenged. The healthcare market is becoming more consumer driven as disease and treatment information become more accessible and as digital increasingly fuses expectations across industries. In addition, a proliferation of data and new technology is revealing new insights and enabling new ways to identify patients' needs and deliver quality care.
Some of the market forces changing the healthcare landscape include:
Healthcare companies face new economic realities
Healthcare spending keeps rising as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), driven largely by labor costs. Margins are being squeezed by continued market, legislative and regulatory pressures. Simultaneously, business models are evolving as reimbursements become more tied to outcomes.
Healthcare markets are changing
Consumers are bearing a greater burden of their healthcare cost and risk. As such, they are becoming more engaged shoppers for quality care and excellent customer service at a fair cost. Simultaneously, demand is growing as chronic conditions become more prevalent, with aging populations and growing affluence in emerging markets.
The digital healthcare revolution is here
New data sources, artificial intelligence (AI) and computing power are enabling breakthroughs. Insights are being unlocked from vast data sets (e.g. genomes, electronic health records (EHRs), mobile diagnostics, wearable devices). This creates the potential to accelerate new drug discovery, precision health and operational savings.
To navigate this time of risk and opportunity, healthcare companies need to approach the market and their business in a fundamentally different way.
The healthcare market is becoming more consumer driven.
Many healthcare leaders may be unclear where to begin.
It’s difficult to determine where to invest in the intelligent technologies that will deliver the most value in the short, medium and long term. And, it’s a significant undertaking to transform in support of new business models, while also continuing to run and improve their core business.
Healthcare of the future will be end to end, analytics driven, outcome based and service oriented. Industry boundaries are blurring as new competitors, such as high-tech companies, enter the field, and traditional players increasingly converge, resulting in a more intensely competitive, outcomes-oriented and customer-centric environment. This cross-industry synergy will be the new modus operandi and key determinant to business success.
Data will provide the fuel and connective tissue. Intelligent technologies—powered by AI—will unlock the value. AI will generate new data-based insights, create new efficiencies, and achieve better patient and economic outcomes, while delivering excellent, personalized experiences. Leading companies will transform treatment, care and business operations by putting data and AI at the core of everything they do.
AI will generate new insights, create new efficiencies, and achieve better patient and economic outcomes.
Although AI is a transformative technology, its potential for healthcare is best realized when applied to practical problems and highly targeted use cases.
Organizational change happens by “building up” from applying new solutions, rather than “forcing down” from theoretical constructs. And, as AI-based innovation creates efficiencies, it unlocks working capital to invest in solving the next business priority.
Key applications, innovations and benefits include:
Discovering innovative patient treatments
Delivering better patient care
Driving more efficient operations and optimizing reimbursement
Engaging patients more effectively to grow the business
Using AI to reinvent healthcare will provide targeted and tangible benefits to all aspects of the patient experience, and subsequently, the business. Furthermore, it will create fundamental change that allows companies to seize new opportunities while navigating extreme market forces in the healthcare landscape.