The drivers for accelerating the adoption of digital technology in healthcare have, in the past, been offset by technical and organisational issues that have led to delays and put healthcare digitally behind other areas of life. In our lives as consumers, data supports our decisions and connects our world, but for patients, there are two parallel worlds: the connected world and the unconnected one.
Before we look at the patients’ journey, one symptom that is clearly voiced by patients is how disjointed the system really is.
To address this, the many caregivers – from clinicians, family members and payers to platforms and technology – must be integrated with a shared health view, centred around the patient. Without this, the patient themselves (or their family) become the care coordinator and the shared health record!
The Next Wave Of Healthcare Innovation
Exposure to the internet, social networks and mobile systems from an early age has created a generation comfortable with cross-referencing multiple sources of information and options while integrating digital, virtual and offline experiences. And older patients are becoming increasingly comfortable with digital solutions, too – indeed, it is often the older or more vulnerable that can benefit from new technologies.
And from a patient’s perspective, their health journey should be quite simple: they are well, or they are being treated after their condition has been diagnosed. Patients certainly expect the treatments to potentially be complicated and worrying, but not the administrative pathway.
A patient’s expectation is to access services anytime and anywhere they want, yet the healthcare system continues to pull them into an analogue world. This carries a high risk of disengagement, loss to follow-up and reduced compliance with therapies.
Digital Healthcare Ecosystem Market, Top Key Players Are Ibm
For a connected patient and their clinicians and caregivers, many (and typically most) of the interactions with health providers should be digital.
Let’s look at a typical journey for a patient. The following examples show the patient’s and clinician’s concerns in the unconnected world and how these can be addressed by technology for a connected patient.
Technology: Making patients feel connected to the medical team by using app-based reporting systems which confirm to the patient that their report has been received. Robust and secure messaging and video call services can accomplish this, with potential AI and decision support systems screening cases before they are presented to the medical team.
Illustration For The Extended Healthcare Ecosystem.
Technology: Building appropriately secure and private interfaces between a consumer-facing app and the hospital IT systems is critical. Applying AI and decision support systems can help with screening and more automated, efficient scheduling to benefit both patients and medical staff.
Clinician: Staying current, outcome reporting, communication across organisations, documenting for reimbursement. Data siloes create business challenges. Access to the right information in the right place at the right time is essential to ensure the right care is delivered. The time involved in manually entering data for reporting if it is not continuously collected and displayed.
Technology: Portals and apps for shared records allow patients and clinicians to understand the situation and share information. Interfacing complex data back-end systems, with appropriate security and data privacy concerns addressed, is a challenge and uses up product development resources as the number of disparate systems to be connected continues to grow. Legacy systems also need to be connected, not just modern API- and cloud-based architectures.
Mapping Out The Digital Health Ecosystem
Clinician: Interpreting in context, explaining to patient, responsibility and accountability, managing large data sets from remote monitoring of patient symptoms and biomarkers, managing patient expectations, concerns about diagnostic software and AI bias.
Technology: Building consumer-facing medical devices with the rigor of medical apps while keeping the compliance of commercial apps is critical. UI/UX design experience is needed to navigate these tricky waters. Also, blending regulated software medical devices with unregulated platforms is a critical area, something that both the long-term architecture and the short-term quality processes must consider. This includes change management, post-market surveillance, reporting, traceability, risk management and a host of processes that meet the medical standards of IEC62304, ISO14971 and ISO13485 for Software as A Medical Device (SAMD).
Technology: Expertise in UI/UX is needed to simplify software for patients and to provide only pertinent data to the medical teams at the right time. To develop appropriate clinical software, it is critical to understand the need to have separate controls for software used as a medical device, e.g. in diagnosis, and for software that is the platform to access the data. There must be a clear delineation and supporting organisational approach in technology companies providing the solution.
The Future Of Digital Health
Patient: Not personalised, one-size-fits-all, fixed-length outpatient appointments. Lack of choice, not human-centric, lack of clarity and transparency about who to call and when. No way to access services flexibly as expected, e.g. using a smartphone.
Clinician: Wishing to use remote monitoring, video, chat, telephone, triage, multi-disciplinary team, making care bespoke to patients. Patient’s disease progression is only observed through episodic clinical visits, meaning fluctuations in disease progression are not always captured.
Technology: Software plays a key role, as it can run on the patients’ phones when they are away from the clinic. They can act as a hub for other devices, such as blood pressure or blood sugar monitors or different types of wearables that can connect through the patient phone. Building a sense of connection through a device that the patient is very familiar with and that is usually with the patient is the key to making the patient feel connected to their medical team. The software design needs to consider the requirements related to maintaining compliance and keeping the patient’s attention and interest to avoid device and software burnout.
Why The Healthcare Ecosystem Matters
Within the overall context of the health system, the patient journey is complex, but from the perspective of the patient, it should seem simple! Only a digitalised and connected system can provide that kind of patient-friendly, simple experience.
Gillian has over 20 years’ experience as a medical consultant in frontline healthcare delivery, with 5 years as service director, is a recognised NHS innovator in transformational change through digital health technology, and has been awarded innovation funding from the NHS, Innovate UK, and SIBG. She has extensive experience and knowledge of navigating healthcare strategy, regulations, and commissioning from both a vendor and purchaser perspective.Germany is on the rise in digital health, which is why the market size is expected to reach 57 billion euros by 20251. Factors such as new regulations, the presence of successful accelerators, investors, and associations make Germany an attractive ecosystem for digital health startups.
As regulations in particular are a critical factor for digital health startups, Germany has already achieved a major step in this area. Since the introduction of the E-Health Act for better patient care through digitalization of the healthcare system in 2015, more and more laws have been passed to strengthen digitalization in healthcare with influence on the digital health market. In particular, the introduction of the Digital Health Act in 2019, with the prescription of digital health applications (DiGAs)
Hmpi The U.s. Healthcare Ecosystem: Payers, Providers, Producers
. Since the introduction of DiGA in Germany, eleven digital health companies focusing on therapeutic areas such as mental health, orthopedics, and cardiovascular disease have been included in the associated DiGA directory on a provisional or permanent basis.
In addition, further laws introduced in 2020, such as the Patient Data Protection Act and the Hospital Future Act, which focus on the digitization of hospital infrastructure, support the digitization of the entire healthcare industry and enable new opportunities for digital health companies in Germany.
But there are also European initiatives that support the spread of digital health with a positive impact on Germany. European programs such as EU4Health, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe support investments in the field of a digitalized healthcare system in Europe.
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In addition, initiatives such as the European Health Data Space focus on an efficient exchange of health data in the EU, not only for health care itself, but also for health research on the way to a networked European Health Union.
Factors for a digital health ecosystem. In Germany, there are so far about 26 accelerators, incubators and innovation hubs supporting digital health companies.
Most of them are located in Berlin, which is not only a hotspot for accelerators, but also for digital health startups and venture capitalists investing in the digital health space. In 2020, 62 digital health startups were located in Berlin, of which about 83% were founded after 2013.
An Overview Of Digital Health Ecosystem
Based on internal researches, there are about 79 venture capitalists in Germany that had an investment in digital health, showing a founder-friendly landscape for digital health startups.
In general, Germany is driving positive changes for a conducive ecosystem for digital health startups. Further regulations planned for 2021, such as the Act for the Digital Modernisation of Care and Nursing, with the expansion of digital health not only in the form of DiGA, but also with the introduction of digital care applications (DiPA's) for people in need of care with the outlook for prescription, will support Germany's overall digitalization strategy.Value-based reimbursement models have emerged to encourage new efficiencies aimed at improving population health and lowering the cost of care. With the realignment of incentives, the companies and organizations that comprise the healthcare ecosystem: primarily hospitals, medical groups and payers with connections to medical device,
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