CES 2019: breaking down barriers in access to healthcare

This January, as part of a “learning expedition” delegation organized by the Cigref, I had the opportunity to return to Las Vegas for CES, the world’s biggest consumer technology show, and the de-facto event for spotlighting the product innovation trends of the year to come. My particular focus this year was healthtech, though I was (as always) keeping an eye on the wider innovations that will change the playing field globally!

Was there one, emblematic, standout product at CES this year? Maybe not. Tech that in previous years had the “wow” factor (I’m thinking of wireless charging, or even Pepper the robot, as a crowd-pleaser…) are now, simply... part of the furniture.

But true innovation is not necessarily disruptive on every level. Sometimes sustaining innovation can create the right conditions for a disruptive “leap” to happen; and sometimes innovation that is more incremental on a technical level, given the right framework, can still disrupt a market.

So my takeaways, this year, are more global. Rather than one single product, there was an underlying trend. And this was true for CES as a whole, as well as for the healthtech sector. That trend was disappearing barriers.

The connected individual

In users’ day-to-day interactions with technology, vocal assistants are the major development. Smart speaker ownership continues to grow (now 21% of US adults, according to NPR – a 14 million person uptick on last year) and the generalization of voice as an interface – not just in smart speakers, but in other devices – naturally follows. In healthcare, this means a way of addressing the needs of the many populations that have trouble with visual or tactical interfaces. A typical example of this is Pria, the medication management device by Black+Decker. Where caregivers aren’t available for round-the-clock care, Pria helps out by dispensing pills, giving reminders to take medicine, and communicating with the care team via a smartphone app. The fact that it is a physical appliance (discreet but friendly-looking, about the size of a coffee machine) is almost misleading: it is the voice interaction that means that the material, screen-based interface – which can otherwise be a pain point for much of this target market – is no longer a barrier or an obstacle to communication.  

In IoT, though there was no stand-out use case (and the field continues to be particularly prone to gadgetry!), the current universalization of IoT meant that there were some interesting developments in wearables. Take the example of AerBetic, for diabetes: using ultrasensitive gas sensors, the device monitors the wearer’s breath for signs of hypoglycemia, and sends an alert (to the user and/or carers) via the smartphone app. Less invasive (or annoying or painful) than traditional devices, this kind of wearable can empower patients to live freer lives, removing obstacles to comfort and independence, and that’s pretty exciting.

Connecting inside the home

A continuation of the developments we’ve seen in recent years, of hardware innovations that build on the processing power already available in consumer smartphones, I was particularly struck by EyeQue. An at-home vision test, this promises to truly disrupt the optical sector, making eye care accessible and affordable to billions of people.

This breaks down barriers that we’re used to seeing, both on a market level, and on an individual, logistical level: when it is no longer necessary to leave the home space in order to access necessary healthcare services, this changes everything!

Connecting the world

Sometimes the barriers to improving healthcare services are even less visible, but removing them could be groundbreaking.

One of the major leaps we saw this year was in AI-powered translation. The Alibaba simultaneous translation booth gathered quite a lot of attention (English-Chinese translation already operational, and French planned for 2020), but I’m even more excited about the bunch of smaller startups already producing wearables: the WT2 Plus earpieces allow both speakers to hear the other directly translated into their language (36 languages handled, via the associated phone app), while Pocketalk functions as a standalone device, but already manages 74 languages. These are both products already on sale to consumers in the $200-300 price range… for tech that, just a few years ago, was still in the realm of science fiction. We can already envisage the healthcare implications: for collaboration, for access… for anything where language was previously a major barrier.

Add to this, too, major changes in the speed of communication, with 5G on the very near horizon. Though from afar this might sound like an incremental innovation (3G-4G-5G…), in reality it’s closer to revolutionary: speed (10GB/s), reliability (99.999%) and energy efficiency (10% of current consumption) are just a few of the ways this will “level up” communication as we know it.

Think: healthtech wearables, with next-to-no lag times between sensor detection, analysis and feedback. Think: real-time translation…. In a web conference with a doctor on the other side of the globe.

Verizon keynote. Photo credit: Cigref.

Should the barriers be broken?

Of course, sometimes barriers are there for a reason. The barrier between users’ private data and the companies that might want to profit from it was the major subject of much of last year in Europe. At CES, we saw that (and despite a position of competition among the three major blocs - US, EU and China) the US are also starting to reflect on the controls that might be necessary to better protect their people.

With user trust in tech giants at an all-time low, ethics is more important than ever. Innovating in the healthcare space in 2019 will mean finding the right path, between breaking down the right barriers – to access, to collaboration, to development – and managing to support those that keep us, and patients, safe.

Break barriers, build bridges

Overall, from bridge-building tech to the communication “catalysts” mentioned above, I think that 2019 will, overall, be a year in which we see people brought closer together - both to and through technology. And the advances we see globally will have direct impact on the healthcare sector, both in mainstream and specialised segments.

What did you think? What barriers do you see being broken in 2019? And what were your highlights from this year’s CES? Let me know in the comments below!

Finally - and especially - thank you to all at the Cigref organising committee, and my fellow delegees, who made this “learning expedition” trip so enriching!