The healthcare industry is witnessing a transformative wave with the surge of advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), Generative AI and edge computing. The burgeoning digital health market is already creating ripples across the healthcare value chain—it is anticipated to reach USD 1,592 billion by 2032. North America has maintained a prominent stance in this market, boasting a value of approximately USD 93.4 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific region, notably countries such as India and China, is poised for remarkable expansion within the digital health market, driven by the increasing digitalisation of technology.
In the face of this digital explosion, healthcare providers and payers globally are gearing up for a paradigm shift, moving from a care-based to a preventive-based one. Also, as patients become more aware, connected, and empowered amid steep healthcare costs–they are unafraid to seek alternatives that provide them with affordable, personalised, and convenient care.
The demand for enhanced health experiences urges healthcare leaders to remodel relationships with stakeholders and patients propelled by digital adaptations like cloud-native health platforms, AI-assisted workflows, smart wearables, EHRs, and more.
Ascending to the cloud: A paradigm shift in care delivery
Every healthcare organisation has aimed for two primary outcomes through cloud adoption – agility and scale. Migrating to cloud-native models also enables healthcare enterprises to improve interoperability to drive enhanced care experiences. A finding reveals that 95 percent of healthcare providers plan to migrate over half of their applications to the cloud within three years.
The evolutionary journey of cloud care started with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and smart wearables. Today, with the onset of context-sensitive data extraction and conversational interfaces, cloud healthcare has expanded to state-of-the-art models, including integrated health information systems, cloud health libraries, drug discovery and delivery systems, and clinical decision support (CDS) systems.
The scalability offered by cloud adoption enables the expansion of resources on demand, ensuring seamless adaptation to growing needs. Interoperability, the trend driving healthcare operations today, is fostered through the cloud, facilitating seamless data exchange, and enhancing collaboration among healthcare systems. Interconnected healthcare leads to improved health outcomes, personalised patient care, and enhanced treatment decision support.
Executive Vice President
CitiusTech.
Cloud adoption also improves process efficiency by streamlining workflows and optimising operational processes. Robust data protection and compliance with evolving industry standards ensure a secure healthcare environment. Moreover, the cloud’s cost-efficiency model translates to reduced capital expenses and a pay-as-you-go approach for resource usage.
One of the most notable advantages is the global accessibility that cloud adoption brings, providing access anytime, anywhere. This accessibility further facilitates Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), allowing healthcare professionals to monitor patients remotely and intervene promptly when necessary.
The expanding healthcare cloud market thus clearly indicates why the healthcare sector must invest in robust and reliable cloud computing to provide better patient care at lower costs.
From reactive to proactive care: Navigating healthcare digital frontier
How are healthcare payers and providers embracing the next in digital transformation? With patient-centricity taking the spotlight, the focus is on building strategies that redefine the standard of care and promise impactful outcomes in a future where anticipatory, personalised healthcare drives improved patient well-being and resilience in the healthcare ecosystem.
Payers: Deploying technologies into payer models like AI-enhanced customer insights, chatbots and virtual assistants, predictive analytics for risk assessment, cloud-based storage, and ML for fraud detection has enabled healthcare payers to improve patient access and engagement significantly. Modern patients desire a more retail-like experience, wherein health insurers create plans tailored to their specific needs supported by omnichannel communication.
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For example, an insurance provider can construct a unified system, incorporating pre-built key performance indicators (KPIs) to streamline workflows and enhance operational efficiency. This, in turn, results in a cascade of benefits both downstream and upstream, including seamless NCQA submissions, enhanced HEDIS sampling, improved compliance reporting, and provider engagement. The key to a hyper-personalized patient experience while ensuring maximum profitability and customer satisfaction is utilizing next-generation technology complemented by competitive pricing. This explains why CIOs in the payer community are gearing up to integrate GenAI into their core administrative systems to churn responsive, cost-effective health plans.
Providers: Healthcare providers are venturing beyond the walls of their institutions. Empowered with advanced AI tools, providers can sift through vast repositories of health data and extract crucial insights that can revolutionise healthcare practices. This newfound capability allows for streamlining workflows, development of predictive models, optimising care delivery, and discovering innovative approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
Moreover, the rise of evidence-based clinician-logic-driven models highlights the growing relevance of AI in guiding and augmenting clinical decision-making processes. For instance, clinicians deployed an AI and NLP-powered platform that integrates data from smart wearables, imaging tools, and medical systems for Alzheimer’s patients. This integrated platform transforms how clinicians engage with Alzheimer’s patients’ health data. By harnessing data from wearables, it monitors vital signs and behavioural patterns, offering real-time insights into the patient’s condition. Simultaneously, it interfaces with imaging equipment to analyse brain scans, providing a more holistic understanding of the disease progression. Moreover, the platform integrates with EHRs and other medical systems to amalgamate historical data, ensuring a longitudinal view of the patient’s health journey.
With public health progress on the radar of global governments, there is a need for digital health models that can derive deep insights and curate personalised patient journeys without compromising on data security and protection.
Welcoming the future: The digital health odyssey
It’s abundantly evident that digital infrastructure, data, tech, and patient-centricity will be pivotal in shaping humanised healthcare in the coming years. As digital health expands, tech-forward solutions and services can no longer be an afterthought. Healthcare leaders must seek ways to connect, combine, and interrogate data and unlock actionable insights to drive innovations and sustainable operations.
The ubiquity of data and analytics further opens up new windows of opportunities, enabling organisations to maximise revenue and stay relevant in changing times. Data-driven health ecosystems will empower the C-suite to create value and generate the desired positive impact across the care continuum.
