Digital health promises to change the face of healthcare.
Reflecting this is growing interest in the digital health space, as evidenced by a substantial $4,7-billion being invested in 2017 as outlined in the brand new report from IDTechEx Research, “Digital Health 2018: Trends, Opportunities and Outlook”.
Digital health also took prominence in the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January 2018, illustrating its growing importance – but it is not limited to strictly the healthcare space. CES 2018 also saw digital health having a substantial presence marking a new age of patient-centric healthcare.
Digital health is a convoluted and complex field, much of which is made up of technologies and services that enable healthcare outside of traditional clinical settings. It follows a global trend in the healthcare industry of decentralization to alleviate overburdened hospitals and clinics.
Coupled with escalating healthcare costs, shrinking profit margins and ageing populations suffering with chronic conditions, digital health offers a solution to these problems for all players in the space including patients, providers and payers. In fact, it presents such an alluring and lucrative opportunity that companies not previously in the healthcare space are making significant investments and moves to do so.
Big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple and Alphabet also used January 2018 to announce their endeavours into the digital health space, impacting the price of stocks in the healthcare market.
The time is ripe for digital health due to the combination of a number of factors. These include changing population demographics, such as ageing populations with increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, as well as current and upcoming changes to regulations and reimbursements which mean that the route to market and take-up of digital health services and technologies is more likely in 2018 and beyond.
By whichever name it comes under, whether that’s digiceuticals, digital therapeutics or software-as-a-drug, this idea of software replacing drugs is a worry for large, established pharmaceutical companies.
Coupled with the changing landscape of healthcare which is moving away from treating patients and towards a model of preventative care and a move from fee-based to value-based services, big pharma is being disrupted and digital health threatens to cause even more turbulence.
The IDTechEx Research report, “Digital Health 2018: Trends, Opportunities and Outlook”, provides a detailed overview of the ecosystem and offering insights into the key trends, opportunities and outlooks for all aspects of digital health.