New landscape for digital health
Things are looking different, but it's still early innings
When I started this year I had a sense that the moment for digital health was soon approaching, so much so I wrote about it here. 9 months into the year and terrain for digital health has transformed. Accelerated by the pandemic as I wrote about here. But also driven by likes of the new digital health policy in Germany, reimbursement for telehealth in America, and recent message by the UK health secretary encouraging a continued shift towards as he calls it ‘Zoom medicine’. Although significant this is just the beginning. Digital health is far far far away from the norm as part of healthcare, only the post-COVID world will tell. Sooner rather than later we will begin to find where the true value of digital healthcare exists.
From my perspective, the value from digital health will not last in areas of healthcare where we take our current ways of doing things and in so many words put them ‘online’ (video consultations are an example of this). In America, the surge in telehealth requirement during the pandemic has already overwhelmed telehealth services. Rather we need to transform the fundamentals of how we deliver care using technology. Make better use of the clinical time, support faster, earlier clinical decisions and empower the patient to act earlier and often by themselves e.g. relying less on appointments for care and using virtual reviews to follow up, empowering patients with digital behavioural change programs and using algorithms to proactively review patients over time to identify patterns of ill health earlier. Without this change, digital health will never reach its full potential within the system.
Both healthcare and technology need to be influenced by each other to create a better healthcare system. A healthcare system that is more accessible, acts earlier, more personalised, produces better outcomes and more affordable. These are the pillars for the healthcare system we all desire. I strongly believe moulded by the abilities of technology, the healthcare system will get there. I still stand by my prediction that the next 10 years will see this transformation unfold, greater than any other decade in humanity. Who knows I may be proven wrong in 9 months time again *shrugs*