Innovation, Agility and Growth of Healthcare Informatics and eHealth

I read an article recently about the expenditure spent on healthcare in the US alone. I fell off the chair to seeing the numbers.

US Healthcare alone costs well over $3.1 Trillion

9% of GDP the USA!

4.1% of world economy!

Biggest expenditure factor for US Economy (taking over 23% of a dollar spent greater than social security, defence, education, infrastructure etc.)!

Increased by 115 times in 54 years! Doubling every year!

Trails only the USA, China, Japan and Germany in terms of overall GDP, if this expense were considered to be a GDP of a country!

While these numbers may seem trivial to some, I do feel that with the advances of technology, healthcare and medicine, people are living longer and healthier than ever before. We find cure faster than before (take the case of recent Ebola) and address the issue before it becomes a global pandemic issue.

While US is not the only country that faces the challenges in healthcare expenditure, the challenges faced by the industry (including Payers, Providers, Pharmacies, Corporates and Individuals) are multi-faceted across the globe. Be it UK (NHS and corresponding services), Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, India – The challenges are multi-fold, albeit having a local variant driven by policies and regulations.

How do we address these challenges?

• Paying the optimal price points at strategic inflection level
• Providing the right care, diagnosis and treatment
• How do we avoid wastages
  • Incorrect prescription
  • Incorrect triaging
  • Inappropriate ask for treatment
  • False negatives for emergency care
  • Incorrect hospitalisations
  • Misdiagnosis
  • Incorrect data mapping
  • Wrong medication
  • Medicinal, treatment related wastages
  • Commute time reduction
  • Incorrect specialist tagging
  • Caused due to Fraud and illegal activities
  • etc.

Healthcare as an industry is addressing all these and more with a deeply integrated systemic solution. Similar to the way the pharmaceutical companies are improvising the rapid delivery of new drugs/molecules with cost/time efficient processes, healthcare industry is improving situation with the following

• Accountable Care – Via ACA act
• Proactive Risk Management – To avoid fraud and wastages
• Medicare/Medicaid system and similar Public/Private Health Exchanges/Partnerships
• Payer / Provider systemic reforms to avoid manually intensive/error prone processes
• Use of Big-data analytics platform to address myriad of issues/challenges faced by Healthcare industry
• eHealth – by providing virtual doctors, Self-diagnosis with bionic suits, Digital Medical devices, eHealth driven by Internet of Things, Efficient Population health management to avoid obesity and associated health issues by making people fitter, stronger and healthier – by innovative cost avoidance programmes
• Smart healthcare driven by wearable devices (Watches, glasses, Augmented Reality, Health Trackers)

I do see a tremendous scope for innovation in healthcare. If I recall a quote made by a fellow professional, Please let me know if you are working on innovative healthcare informatics industry/start-ups – I will be ready to invest. It is no wonder that some of the strongest performing stocks in the US stock market are healthcare related. Given the size, possibilities and scope for innovation, Healthcare will become a king of an industry to reckon with in the next 10 years, at least in the US, if not globally.

Comments are welcome.

Note: All comments and opinions expressed (other than facts referred from sources) are personal opinions of the author. I am not a Healthcare industry expert as well. E&OE.

Image Credits: Free images sourced from stockphotosforfree.com.