“Innovations in healthcare” doesn’t just mean new high-tech procedures and machinery, it also means improving care, saving patients and hospitals money, bridging the gaps that exist within class and other demographics, and, simply put, making the healthcare system better. If correctly implemented, advanced in healthcare are expected to increase younger generations’ life expectancy upwards of 100 years, and here are some things to be excited for in 2020.
Health informatics is a process of utilizing data and information technology to organize and analyze records in an attempt to improve care for patients who suffer from a given ailment. Historically, this information has been more secularly available within health systems, but in recent years, electronic health records are being utilized by patients, doctors, nurses, insurance companies, and IT personnel to help create a larger knowledge base to be utilized in increasing care and cutting costs. Public health informatics can help with addiction treatment, symptom trends in a given population, issues that affect different races, ages, genders, and ethnicities different than others, and many, many more.
As mentioned above, ailments affect certain demographics differently, and it may be staggering to read that nearly 80% of human-genome research is conducted on Caucasian people, even though white is the global minority. Western medicine has historically aimed to help Western patients, but with the evolution of health education showing doctors that ethnicity does, indeed, play a large role in certain treatments, diversifying the testing fields of future medications and treatments will result in more granular information when it comes to treating a given patient. This ultimately will help with costs, too, as more drugs will certainly become available as a more diverse group of people gets added to the clinical testing bank.
AI, in all industries, is helping to drive down costs related to personnel. When it come to artificial intelligence in healthcare, this means more streamlined telehealth systems and algorithms to quickly determine a given patient’s needs, as well as robotics being used for improved surgical precision and even things like robots to lift patients who need help getting in out of bed. AI’s primary gain is monetary, and money should be saved by patients and providers alike if implemented correctly and fairly.
Though most of what was mentioned before relates to wide stroke advancements, the next two innovations are defined to an advancement in a certain procedure. As concierge healthcare, where patients pay an annual fee for baseline visits, continues to trend, so will other ways of saving money in healthcare. For expectant mothers, there is a pretty intriguing item on the rise called the Butterfly iQ that could replace the $100,000 ultrasound machines in the hospital with a $2,000 gadget for ultrasounds. The mobility of the innovation also makes it possible to reach mothers around the globe who wouldn’t otherwise have access to ultrasounds. Champions of the Butterfly iQ equate it to thermometers, which were once only used in healthcare setting and are now found in medicine cabinets across the globe.
VR is a booming industry, and though most notorious in the video game industry, many practical uses are being tested and implemented. For Immersive Rehab, a London company founded by a biomedical engineer who suffered a spine injury that required three years of physical rehab, they are looking to use VR to increase the range of exercises patients can try, and also creating more chances for the brain to repair neural pathways. It would allow for at-home rehab sessions, and clinical trials are already beginning in the U.S. and Europe.
The primary goal of any healthcare innovation is to improve care for patients, but all aim to also lower costs and increase the reach of healthcare to serve more isolated populations. Information, diversity, and portable health equipment are all sections of the healthcare industry that will be receiving a lot of attention in the 2020s.
