What Problems Can Health Tech Innovations Solve In The Next Five Years?

These past few years have become iconic for medicine if we talk about new directions, Health Tech innovations, and digital technologies implementation. Healthcare blurs boundaries, exploiting growing opportunities for interaction with all disciplines that can give it a qualitative leap in development. Artificial intelligence and wearable devices are becoming more and more common in organizing a medical process and monitoring a person’s vitals.

In this article, OpenGeeksLab has highlighted a new set of Health Tech innovations to solve consumers problems for the next five years.

World Digital Health Market in Figures

Below are the world eHealth market data presented by Statista.

Image source: Statista

As you can see, the major segments are electric medical record/electric health record (EMR/EHR) systems, telehealth, mobile health, and wireless health. Mobile and wireless health markets show the highest rates and drive the world market which, in turn, is forecasted to reach the 206 billion USD mark by 2020.

1. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)

IoT healthcare solutions in monitoring health condition or physical activities indicators are gaining popularity every year. Such devices as cardiac monitors, capable of warning of impending heart attack, will help to reduce mortality rates, improve disease prevention, and reduce the burden on health systems.

2. Mobile Health

mHealth apps are gaining mainstream status as people need constant access to healthcare services, and transparency is of great importance. Here come mobile applications which provide medical support, or health applications which store medical data:

• activity tracking apps;
• workout and exercise apps;
• nutrition apps;
• pill & med reminders;
• apps for storing, recording and sharing personal medical data with therapists;
• apps for managing chronic diseases;
• clinical applications;
• applications enabling patients to interact with medical centers or clinics.

3. Genome Editing Technology  (GET)

Development of modern technologies had led to a real breakthrough in genetic engineering with the invention of gene editing technology. It will be useful for such diseases treatment as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

4. Telehealth & Telemedicine

Telemedicine services ensure communication between patients and therapists at a distance. Medicare telehealth allows monitoring a patient’s health in a case when he or she on the rehab at home, helping people who live far from medical institutions to communicate with doctors in emergencies and resolving issues that don’t require face-to-face consultation with physicians.

It is worth noting that the world telehealth market is forecasted to reach the 40 billion USD mark by 2021.

5. Electric Health Record (EHR) System

EHR system means that all medical recordings of patients are stored in healthcare databases and can be used and shared over secure networks among authorized organizations.

In the US, 94% of hospitals have already adopted EHRs. As for the EU, centralized European health record system should become a reality by 2020.

Health Tech Innovations Drive the Market

There are a lot more technologies shaping the future of medicine and healthcare besides IoMT, mHealth, GET, telehealth, and EHR. In our previous article, we described the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), nanotech and robotics.

Healthcare is one of the most promising areas for adopting Big Data and Analytics potential. For instance, Big Data in medicine allows predicting the number of patients and optimizing the schedule of medical personnel. Four Paris hospitals have successfully implemented such an experiment.

eHealth solutions are gradually replacing a medical system as we know it today by creating great patient-centric products.