The healthcare industry changes like the wind in a volatile environment buffeted by technological advancements and evolving patient needs. It’s crucial to keep track of disruptive trends impacting how healthcare professionals conduct themselves and the demands on organizations to deliver the best care possible.
In this article, we explore groundbreaking healthcare trends expected to drive the industry in 2024 and beyond. A word of warning, though: This isn’t a must-have checklist for everyone in the world of healthcare. Instead, careful review and selection must lead to clear plans for implementation and management. Change itself is never the goal, of course, but good intentions don’t automatically lead to improvements, either. Sadly, initiative fatigue and poorly managed innovations can hamper both patient and employee experience.
How, then, can healthcare professionals balance the benefits of these healthcare trends while keeping in mind a “do no harm” approach to both patients and colleagues?
Anticipating change is vital to trend evaluation and bolstering our abilities to create optimal healthcare solutions proactively and innovatively. In an era of rapid technological evolution, every healthcare participant and contributor must practice future-ready healthcare to stay viable and resilient.
Ingredients of a healthy approach to trend adaptation
Healthcare system agility is vital.
Unless healthcare entities can respond quickly, patient care will suffer under stodgy systems unable to respond to professional streamlining efforts or stay ahead of the technology innovation curve. In other words, healthcare stakeholders must enter the arena expecting and welcoming dynamic change, not getting shocked by events that demand a shift in strategy. It’s only possible if their mindset is change-centric, ready to address challenges as opportunities.
Patient-centric satisfaction is a mainstream objective.
Any healthcare trend that excludes patient participation in their own wellbeing will likely stutter and peter out. Indeed, patient experience isn’t a one-dimensional measurement — it’s at the root of best-in-class healthcare delivery. In-depth patient understanding and successful treatment go hand in hand. It almost goes without saying that everything mentioned above and below would have no traction unless patients agree they are getting better outcomes with innovative treatments.
Financial and operational viability are critical.
No matter how penetrating a patient treatment channel is, its sustainability is in the balance unless it reduces costs, improves revenues, or both with a bottom-line ROI that makes sense. From a holistic perspective, digital healthcare technologies and innovations align with significant cost reductions for providers and patients.
Streamlined processes and advanced tools driving trends significantly advance operational efficiency that prolongs lives, reduces suffering, and shortens patient recoveries – emerging as massive game-changers.
Change won’t manage itself.
According to the World Health Organization, technological and organizational factors that are unsupervised or ‘managed’ by unqualified entities can lead to unfortunate results, including negative patient outcomes. Be sure you have the right team in place, the right knowledge and skills, and the right shared expectations before moving forward with any changes.
5 healthcare trends to follow in 2024
While we could certainly include a wide range of items on this list, in the interest of time, we’ve focused on five.
- Advanced technologies in healthcare
- Harnessing big data
- Digital and remote healthcare
- More personalized healthcare
- Preventative healthcare
1. Advanced technologies in healthcare
There are an astonishing wave of advanced technologies impacting our everyday lives, and many of these are having a major impact on healthcare, as well. Generative AI (AI), Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), and Additive Manufacturing are all playing a major role in healthcare tech today.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the center of changing molecular structures to attack cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, fibrosis, and other rare diseases with a new vengeance. AI can sort through gigantic biological and chemical data stores and, via innovative algorithms, target therapeutics in novel ways. For example: A stream of AL-connected events pouring through the healthcare industry, such as medical imaging and precision medicine.
AI is at the center of changing molecular structures to attack cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, fibrosis, and other rare diseases with a new vengeance. AI can sort through gigantic biological and chemical data stores and, via innovative algorithms, target therapeutics in novel ways. For example:
- Insilico Medicine’s generative AI drug design platform, Pharma.AI, has several AI-designed drugs like:
- a USP1 inhibitor treating solid tumors with clinical trial FDA approval
- QPCTL – a malignant tumor treatment – in collaboration with Fosun Pharma.
- An AI-generated drug treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis – a rare lung disease moving into phase-two trials.
- Recursion is deep in phase II clinical trials using proprietary AI and ML computational tools that aim at rare diseases like:
- Cerebral cavernous malformation – enlarged and irregular blood vessels in the brain
- Neurofibromatosis type 2 – a genetic condition causing benign tumors of the brain and spinal cord. Both of these programs are now in phase II clinical trials.
- Healx repurposes existing medicines with AI to improve rare disease treatments, such as Fragile X syndrome and certain cancers (plexiform neurofibroma, nerve cell generated tumors).
- Insilico Medicine’s generative AI drug design platform, Pharma.AI, has several AI-designed drugs like:
VR and AR technologies are front and center in revolutionizing the medical profession’s approach to advanced education, surgical techniques, and patient rehabilitation. How? They deliver immersive 3D training experiences aimed at:
- Improved surgical planning
- A more personalized patient engagement as they progress through a treatment journey
- Deriving significantly more accurate insights from MRI, CT scan, and angiogram unified imaging data
Additive manufacturing is turning crucial healthcare divisions upside down with extraordinary advances in customizing implants, prosthetics, and other devices precisely to patient specifications. It has also taken 3D bioprinting to new levels by revolutionizing complex tissue and organ creation – the core of organ transplantation and regenerative medicine.
For example, multidisciplinary research at the Wyss Institute has led to 3D bioprinting of significantly thicker and more sustainable vascularized tissues (derived from living human cells). It’s part and parcel of companies like this with a strategic focus on developing groundbreaking bio-inspired technologies that began with novel devices and materials and have progressed to include high-value therapeutics and diagnostics. The result is a range of commercial products, and healthcare solutions unimagined a few years ago.
2. Harnessing big data
3. Digital and remote healthcare
Let’s consider these two trends together because of their close integration in driving the evolution of the healthcare industry.
Big data is arguably healthcare’s most valuable asset – holding answers to previously impossible questions. It’s the fertile soil that AI can comprehend in a fraction of human time and detect the diamonds in the rough. Medical records, genomics data, and ongoing patient monitoring are the most prolific data fields. Data engineers get to work, creating unique insights resulting in substantially improved diagnoses, treatment plans, and health management.
Drawing from a few of our recent healthcare articles, here are just a few excellent examples of big data motoring fast and furiously:
- Royal Philips, a mammoth global health technology juggernaut, accumulated 390 million medical records in the cloud as far back as 2016 and converted them into actionable, relevant information.
- The National Institute of Health established Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) to bring researchers, clinicians, and healthcare providers into big data, thereby creating fast patient care, cost and information flow improvements, and better disease cures and prevention strategies.
- Open PHACTS, a researchers’ platform, focuses on providing groundbreaking pharmacological data insights and unraveling complex problems in the arena.
The vastness of digital data archives and the speed of transmission combine to tackle a wide range of healthcare objectives, from administrative tasks to patient care. Wearable tech, telemedicine, and other patient-centered care programs are disrupting “normal” healthcare practices, forcing providers and patients to reconsider what healthcare looks like and how it can continue to improve. Digital healthcare, it is clear, impacts patient experience.
4. More personalized healthcare
With AI, digital innovations, and big data gaining impressive traction in the healthcare industry, it naturally merges into an immense step up in personalized medicine. Everything converges on customization, developing precise diagnostics, laser-accurate treatment plans, and bullseye therapies that rely on each patient’s unique biological and lifestyle characteristics to optimize treatment effectiveness and minimize adverse side effects.
5. Preventative healthcare
Increasing healthcare costs motivates governments to focus on population health – investing in employee wellness programs (EWPs), health screenings, and proactive interventions to prevent disease progression.
EWPs reduce healthcare costs, absenteeism, and on-the-job injuries, improving employee experiences, productivity, morale, and loyalty. Workplace weight loss programs are impressively functional by providing a company gym, a relaxed corporate culture, and healthy food vending machines.
The following are preventative initiatives introduced in the USA offered completely free or partly subsidized depending on one’s age and demographic circumstances:
- Blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol testing
- Numerous cancer screenings, including mammograms and colonoscopies
- Extensive education programs around severe disease sources, such as how to quit smoking, lose weight, eat healthfully, treat depression, and reduce alcohol use
- Encouraging well-baby and well-child visits
- Presenting an array of standard vaccinations against diseases such as measles, polio, flu, Covid, or meningitis
- Building support that includes counseling, screening, and vaccines to promote healthy pregnancies
Under this heading, mental health screening is gaining fantastic traction under standard patient care. Companies and public health authorities have elevated mental health support to priority status as the toll of work stress and the pressures of daily living impress themselves as severe threats to people’s wellbeing. Indeed, many of the physical disabilities emerging (e.g., headaches, ulcers, sleeplessness, stomach cramps) connect to unaddressed mental issues, thus bolstering the case for anticipating cognitive dysfunctions with effective remedies.
Conclusion
The healthcare environment is vibrant, exciting, and highly dynamic, harnessing rapidly evolving technologies to transform the industry on the back of groundbreaking trends. There’s more to discuss than we can fit into a single article, of course, with topics like wearables and IoT devices for remote patient monitoring and emerging blockchain configurations leading to exciting conversations and innovations in the year ahead. These and the mainstream trends described above are gaining traction daily in an integrative way to touch new boundaries in healthcare solutions and personalize patient care beyond expectations.
One thing is clear: Innovation and data-driven technologies drive the industry to a better quality of life for all of us.
