The Future of Healthcare

Big tech companies like Amazon, Google/Alphabet, Apple, IBM and Microsoft are taking their move into healthcare and medicine seriously. They are developing new, health-related features on their platforms. They are also teaming up with research institutions and developers to create new tools for patients, doctors and other stakeholder in medicine – and they are heavily investing in partnerships with start-ups or launching new ventures. This guide details how and why the move of the big tech companies happens to healthcare.

Around the world, populations are getting older, and their health needs are becoming more complex. In many ways, healthcare facilities are still stuck in the 20th century and are long overdue for a top-to-bottom overhaul with digital health leading the way.

Technological advances are changing healthcare delivery. In this book, A Guide To The Future Of Hospitals we explore how hospitals will innovate in the coming decades, and what this innovation will mean for both patients and healthcare professionals.

We think there will be hospitals even 30 years from now; however, their role will be different and they will cover a specific group of treatments and healthcare processes.

We hope this comprehensive review will arm policymakers, healthcare professionals, and people on the business side of care to better see what is coming and what the hospital of the future will be like.

In previous years, The Medical Futurist published annual e-books about digital health trends regarding potential developments that were worth keeping an eye on for that particular year. Based on our analyses and forecasts, these trends help give a bigger picture regarding the direction that the field was heading towards during that year; even though not all forecasts came to fruition.

This current e-book also shares our insights about noteworthy trends based on similar analyses. However, unlike our previous annual trends e-books, we do not restrict ourselves to a current year but look at the short-term future now, with the developments likely to happen in the next 2-5 years. Moreover, we don’t only focus on these insights but also help in providing context about those trends and relevant technologies in general.

In this book, we elaborate on 20 trends that we have been constantly monitoring and that we believe will have the most importance in shaping the digital health landscape in the near future:

1. Patient empowerment is the biggest milestone in the history of medicine
2. Lifestyle medicine is the redesign primary care has needed
3. Globalised healthcare brings precision medicine to life
4. Pharma companies & digital health: packaging a medication with a digital health service
5. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has an edge in drug sensitivity
6. Nutrigenomics is the biggest promise of digital health
7. Food scanners are lagging behind
8. ECG devices have led the regulatory race for portable diagnostic devices
9. A.I.-guided portable ultrasound devices are the unicorns of digital health
10. The conscious health consumer of the future uses sensors and loses privacy
11. Virtual visits and chatbots represent the new primary care
12. Artificial Intelligence needs a prospective upgrade and the video game industry can help
13. Bioprinting: It is possible to bioprint living tissues but not organs
14. 3D printing can customize treatments and supplement the medical supply chain
15. The automation race defines whether A.I. can outperform physicians
16. COVID-19 has catalyzed technological adoption, but not the cultural one
17. Mixed reality can transform virtual meetings and medical education
18. Virtual reality can help ease pain for patients in the hospital
19. Robots only roam rich hospitals and pharmacies
20. Digital health insurance companies will have no competitors

Each section contains an aspect that we wanted to highlight about that technology or trend based on our analyses by studying the field for years. We also walk you through that area with relevant descriptions and examples that we find interesting. Additionally, we include further reading suggestions at the end of every section which you can turn to so as to dive deeper into the subject.

Every medical specialty will transform differently due to the technological revolution. On certain fields, such as nursing, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, innovation will have much less impact than on dentistry, cardiology or pathology. In this e-book we specify in detail how the appearance of artificial intelligence, sensors, wearables, VR/AR or robots affect each medical specialty in order to be able to discern what skills physicians will need in the future.

We aim to show how physicians of the various professions can successfully prepare for the sweeping changes coming with the waves of technology. We want to go against the fears that artificial intelligence, robots or any other innovative solutions will take over doctors’ jobs. While digital technologies certainly have the capacity to take over administrative tasks, organizational processes or even simpler diagnostic steps, the expertise of medical professionals is irreplaceable. Especially if they recognize that their jobs can be much more efficient, creative or even fun if they embrace digital technologies. At the moment, as these innovations are still in the early days of their usage, that doesn’t always seem so.

However, we are certain that technologies will unburden doctors, nurses and other medical professionals in the long run, especially if they learn in time how to cooperate with technologies successfully. Here’s our guide on how to do that.

With the spread of social media, digital health and disruptive technologies such as health sensors, artificial intelligence, or robotics, a new era has begun in healthcare. The ivory tower of medicine is breaking down; patients are becoming empowered; and technologies have been changing the status quo of the doctor-patient relationship.

Healthcare in the 21st century is facing several challenges such as a growing demand for the management of chronic conditions and the increasing costs of healthcare. Digital technologies provide a pathway by which healthcare becomes sustainable and meets the most important goals: improving health, improving patient satisfaction, and reducing costs.

Patients are motivated because of their condition. Physicians derive motivation from the proactivity of their patients. Both patients and caregivers are actively devoted. Companies and start-ups are driven by business needs generated by these changes. This new ecosystem can only thrive if relevant policies are comprehensive and efficient. Before, policy-makers had more time to regulate a new technology as pressure only came from lawmakers.

In the 21st century, this has significantly changed as pressure also comes from consumers who can access data, information, and technologies. They don’t wait anymore for policy-makers to make technology available but turn to new technologies if that helps alleviate pain, better manage their disease, or lead to a cure. 

The #wearenotwaiting initiative is the perfect example for this kind of pressure. As there was no single device on the market to monitor blood sugar and supply insulin automatically, creative patients invented a DIY version from existing technologies. A movement grew out of the initiative and campaigned for the introduction of such an artificial pancreas on the market for years. One of the leading figures of the movement, Dana Lewis used the device for almost two years before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States finally approved it. Patients are not limited to staying outside the ivory tower but can access almost anything only professionals could access before.

This notion made us write this report. At The Medical Futurist Institute, we feel obliged to help the public adopt digital health safely, efficiently, and quickly. We hope to inspire policy-makers worldwide to make the first steps in shaping their regulatory agencies, adopt new technologies, or at least acknowledge patient empowerment and the cultural transformation of healthcare.

As digital health is growing fast and generative AI tools like ChatGPT have hundreds of millions of users, new examples will arise soon therefore this report will be updated when needed and your feedback is more than welcome for that.

Let’s bring healthcare together to the 21st century.