Share this article
During a fascinating Market Logic webinar, experts from Ipsos, Reena Sangar and Paul O’Meara, shared how connected health solutions are changing the healthcare paradigm, as well as how healthcare professionals are engaging with new patient solutions. Amongst the changing healthcare landscape, I described how AI can make life easier for insights managers by delivering instant answers to questions from past research and cutting out the noise.
Top trends on connected health and sharing insights
Reena described how one of the top trends in connected health is the proliferation of technology and innovation. Ipsos has identified eight big trends in connected health and sharing insights from our data:
- Proliferation of technology and innovations
Technology enables us to do more than ever before, including using Virtual Reality to immerse patients in a whole new environment to combat pain and loneliness.
- Consumerization of health
The patient journey is now digital and begins even pre-diagnosis. There is also more biometric data than ever being collected, so we know more about our health than ever before.
“With the proliferation of biometric data, we know more about our health than ever before.” – Reena Sangar, Ipsos
- Positive trends in policy (telehealth)
Where government policy exists, there’s a better uptake in public health.
- Personalization of health
Patients used to have to spend thousands of dollars to go into a very specialist hospital to have their entire genome sequenced. Today, those packs are available for under $100.
- Ageing population
By 2025, there will be more individuals on this planet over the age of 65 and under five, for the first time in history.
- Digital therapeutics
Also known as DCX, this is where technology becomes a therapeutic, clinically validated form of treatment.
- Provider/health systems and preparedness
The journey to electronic medical records and health records has been bumpy, and now providers are opening up their APIs and inviting tech companies to find ways to integrate patient data.
- Wearables for fitness/wellness
In 2015, everyone thought wearables were old news. In fact, wearables just grew up.
The connected patient
Another big trend in healthcare is that patients are now in the driving seat. Knowledge is power, and thanks to the wealth of information at their fingertips, patients are more knowledgeable than ever.
And if we look at generational trends, one thing is for sure: future generations will most certainly not tolerate the limitations on healthcare today. Disruption is nigh. And that’s why there’s such a push to bring tech companies and health companies together.
It’s already happening at lightning speed in China and India, and government policy is a major driving factor. In China, for example, they have had a government policy on interoperability, (the cloud), to bring together all the data sources.
An insurance provider created a product very quickly that allowed people to contact their doctor via phone or SMS, and that product now sees over 750,000 consultations per day.
What are the barriers to connected health?
With the increase in patient knowledge, the top concern from doctors is self-diagnoses without clinical input. There is a rise in self-testing, so the medical profession will need to combat the misinterpretation of data in some cases. Some other barriers include keeping people on a device, as well as data privacy and personalization.
Patients want to know how their individual data will be accessed, and how they will be informed. Finally, awareness and cost are also issues: the messaging around how technology can really transform an individual’s health condition and how they can really optimize their health care is not yet totally clear.
Speed to insight for healthcare
The number of sources that insights and innovation managers in the healthcare sector need to wrap their heads around is unmanageable. Market Logic’s mission is to use AI to help insights and intelligence managers sort through the volatile and information-rich landscape.
All different forms of unstructured and structured data are connected in a knowledge graph. When you ask a question, the knowledge graph will produce a summary of all the relevant information.
The knowledge graph is always looking for connections between patients with similar life circumstances, who can be grouped in a segment that shares a common cluster of needs which can be served by competing brands and different kinds of channels .