First, I will define digital health/healthtech/health 2.0 as products and services that rely on using the Internet and digital data (versus paper or physical contact/in-person consultations), to better the overall physical or mental health of an individual. This does not include medical devices or pharmaceutical.
The major trends for 2017 include using information technology and Internet, of which mobile is a significant component, to do the tasks that patients and physicians or other service providers would ordinarily do, but at a faster, cheaper, and larger scale i.e. to reach a global network without incurring added costs of time and money. Unlike in other industries, healthcare does not allow immediate and ground-breaking leaps in the use of information technology to do new and powerful things that were otherwise not already possible, for example, offering a treatment or diagnosing using the Internet.
Offering a treatment or diagnosing using the Internet.
A few years ago, as an early stage startup investor in Boston, I came across technologies that proposed to use video games to treat Attention Deficit Disorder, or rely on patterns in mobile phone usage to diagnose and manage depression, or leverage the iPhone camera to send images to ophthalmologists to diagnose eye infections in rural India, or attach monitors to cell phones as an electrocardiogram device.
These innovations tread on diagnosing and treating, and must be tempered by regulation and clinical trial validations before adopted use. This is beyond what digital health/healthtech/health 2.0 can reasonably promise to deliver, as the intricacies of the healthcare and legal landscape intervene.
The success of such innovations, measured by adoption and use in the clinical world, is yet to be seen.
However, leveraging technology to improve performance of products and services that already exist, and that improve healthcare delivery as it exists today, is a fair game for digital health/healthtech/health 2.0. This can be boiled down to some key trends.
Trend #3 – Keeping track with the mobile phone
A lot of physical barriers of time and place are broken by the mobile phone today. The mobile phone basically goes wherever you go, no matter where the data or the person who matter to you, resides.
The mobile allows workflow optimizations, such as scheduling and reminders for doctor’s visits, prescription pickup, taking medications, or accessing your health records when you’re on the go.
Secure access to data on the cloud, and on-the-go use of the mobile phone will dominate how patients manage their health matters on a day to day basis. Most likely, there will be more free services and mobile apps that enable such conveniences for patients, and make the experience of interaction with doctors and providers more pleasant and convenient.
Monetization of such conveniences has traditionally been done by collection and sale of data, which in healthcare is valuable (for pharmaceutical companies) but protected by privacy laws (as it should be).
However, when service providers such as a doctor’s office allows you the convenience to complete the medical form on your mobile while you’re waiting in the lobby, driving to the doctor’s office in your cab, collects feedback via a quick alert to your phone on your way out, or allows scheduling to happen via a chat message versus waiting on the phone listening to Muzak for many minutes, there is significant arbitrage of time and money for convenience and pleasantness of experience.
Mobile apps will enable such experiences and enrich the patient, physician, and service providers with time and workflow optimizations. Mobile apps offering several small conveniences in the logistics of healthcare delivery and consumption, will be an enabling trend in the coming years.
– Gitika Srivastava
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