Programmable world - our planet, personalized

While the metaverse is all about leveraging the immersive experience of the virtual world, the programmable world is about building the next version of the physical world in healthcare.

Now, as the real-world impact of the current digital revolution begins to hit critical mass, we are embarking on the next major transformation: The programmable world. In this world, control, customization and automation will be enmeshed in the environment around us. People will have unprecedented ability to command the world to meet their individual needs, deciding what they see, interact with and experience with greater ease and fidelity than ever before.

When digital capabilities are woven into the very fabric of the world, the physical world becomes as smart, customizable and programmable as we expect the digital one to be. Once people can frictionlessly interact with their environment, this can transform healthcare as clinicians and healthcare workers will be able to interact with people in new ways across physical and virtual realms while improving environmental sustainability.

To meet our new expectations for digital conveniences and environmental sustainability, healthcare enterprises will need a deep understanding of three layers that comprise the programmable world: The connected, the experiential and the material.

Connected
Many healthcare enterprises are already investing in and deploying the first layer of programmable world technology, creating a connected foundation. For instance, 80% of the healthcare executives we surveyed say the number of IoT/edge devices deployed in their organization has "significantly" or “exponentially” increased in the past three years. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge of digital innovation to help providers safely deliver care to people virtually. Now the virtual world is a more comfortable space for people to receive and deliver care—and they are ready to delve in further.

Experiential
The next layer of the programmable world is experiential. It has the ability to sense and change its own characteristics. Building on data collected by IoT and edge devices and processed at 5G speeds, digital twins are a core constituent of this layer. These digital models of the physical world give healthcare organizations real-time insight into their environments and operations and can transform people’s healthcare experiences in them.

Material
The final layer of the programmable world is material and constitutes how things are made. It includes a new generation of digital manufacturing and smart materials, which will bring programmability into the physical aspects of our environments. Advances in digital manufacturing techniques are changing how and where physical goods can be made, making on-demand and hyper-customized products a reality in healthcare.

But being able to produce custom devices, tools, prostheses and tissues on demand is only half of this material layer. New kinds of smart materials and programmable matter will soon make it possible to customize or enable custom experiences with physical products after production as well.

Healthcare executives believe emerging programmable world technologies will have a positive impact in the future. But there are significant challenges to connecting these technologies safely and at scale—data interoperability and cyber security.

Most healthcare organizations aren’t going to develop these technologies in-house, so access to and interoperability between different companies’ products will be key. Also, as the healthcare industry scales up programmable world projects, it will be introducing many more connected, intelligent devices which create new entry points connecting our physical and digital worlds. Each of these entry points opens possibilities for innovation and new kinds of patient experiences, but each also creates potential risk. Significantly, risks to cyber security and data privacy will not be relegated to the digital world but will have serious consequences in the physical world, too.

Beyond the fundamentals of data interoperability across digital and physical environments, becoming a healthcare leader in the programmable world will require exploration, experimentation and development across all three layers. It’s time to start working toward "full stack" programmability.

We’re about to live in environments that can physically transform on command, that can be customized and controlled to an unprecedented degree, and that can change faster and more often than we have ever seen before. With these environments, a new arena for innovation and healthcare competition will be born. Will you be ready?