The healthcare industry is experiencing technology transformation, which is driven by changing patient behaviour and the demand for improved patient experience. The patients or the healthcare consumers are becoming increasingly independent, connected, and aware of their health and well-being. There is also a growing expectation for high-quality healthcare at an affordable cost. A consumer or patient today demands care delivery from anywhere and is more engaged in making health-related decisions. This evolving patient behaviour is driving healthcare consumerism.
Patient-centric innovations improve patient experience and care outcomes
Healthcare consumerism is driving patient-centric innovations and healthcare technology developers are focusing on innovations such as user-friendly devices with improved patient experiences. These products prioritise patient value and care outcomes.
Medical device innovations are focused on improving patient comfort through their patient-friendly, non-invasive device design, without compromising on the efficacy and accuracy of the device. Patient monitoring devices are becoming less intrusive and more comfortable on the body. For example, glucose monitoring that traditionally involves a painful finger prick test is now becoming more comfortable using non-invasive glucose monitoring sensors. This makes diabetes management simpler. Another example of user-friendly design revolutionising time-consuming dialysis is the transformation of a traditional bulky bedside dialysis machine into a wearable, miniaturised dialysis machine giving patients mobility and comfort. The medical imaging industry is also following the same trend, for example, enterprise-based bulky ultrasound machines are getting replaced by wearable ultrasound scanning devices enabling remote diagnosis and screening. Recent medical imaging innovations are mobile and easy to use, making it comfortable and convenient for patients.
Healthcare service providers are also embracing patient-centric models improving care outcomes and engagement. The patient or healthcare-consumer-centric model focuses on trust and collaboration between patients and healthcare providers. Value-based care is one of the pivotal ways to achieve patient-centric care. Digital transformation is critical to speed up the implementation of value-based care.
Digital technologies can help hospitals make operational as well as clinical decisions faster and more accurate. Beyond appointment scheduling or bill payment, analytics technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can improve clinical decision-making, and even help tailor interventions based on individual genetic profiles. In Saudi Arabia, digital health start-ups such as ClinicY, Nuacare are helping to improve care delivery and patient experience in hospitals.
The Saudi Arabian Vision 2030 puts a strong emphasis on patient-centric care. Currently, Saudi Arabia's health ministry is working on SEHA Virtual Hospital (SVH) project, which aims to seamlessly connect patients with doctors using digital technologies such as AI and augmented reality. The region is witnessing several collaborations to integrate digital patient-centric care for healthcare enterprises. For example, A South Korea-based AI medical image analysis company is collaborating with SVH to offer its AI-enabled chest X-ray and breast cancer image analysis solution. Similarly, Fujifilm Middle East is collaborating with Almana Group of Hospitals to integrate its digital imaging services.
Digital tools driving patient engagement
Digital technologies for improved patient engagement are not just disrupting healthcare enterprises, but MedTech and pharma companies as well. Each stakeholder is focused on improving value for care, transparency, and convenience to the consumers/patients. Digital tools help improve patient engagement and communication between patients/consumers and healthcare providers.
Large pharma and consumer health companies such as Bayer Consumer Health Division are focusing on new digitally enabled precision health consumer products to improve disease monitoring, awareness, and healthcare personalisation. Its collaboration with the AI-based symptom assessment company, Ada Health helps patients understand their symptoms better. Other examples include Roche Pharma India, which provides The Blue Tree 2.0 mobile app for cancer, haemophilia, and rare disease patients to improve their accessibility to various patient support services such as diagnostic support, drug assistance, expert consultations, and counselling services.
In the medtech field, there are similar examples, such as drug delivery company Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) which offers insulin containers and syringes, is also providing BD™ Diabetes Care App which is a digital diabetes management platform for patients. This combination of mobile apps with insulin dosing provides holistic care to diabetes patients guiding them through nutrition, physical activity, insulin doses, etc.
Innovations improving care accessibility
Over the last few years, there has been a growth of various point-of-care diagnostics and self-diagnosing devices to monitor an individual health pattern such as wearables trackers, self-testing devices, and health and wellness monitoring mobile apps. This is primarily due to the growing prevalence of chronic illness globally, as well as rising disease awareness amongst individuals. These self-monitoring or point-of-care diagnostic devices help in detecting early warning signs of a disease, manage chronic conditions and overall improve the well-being of the patient or consumer.
Innovations in these point-of-care diagnostics are focused on patient comfort and accessibility. They overcome challenges such as long waiting times for results. There are innovations in wearables that enable sweat and interstitial fluid analysis through skin-interfaced flexible microfluidic systems, allowing continuous sampling of the alternate biofluids for real-time and continuous monitoring of healthcare parameters.
There are also microelectronics and sensors-based skin patches or wearables for comfortable health monitoring. A Dubai-based digital health company - Meta[bolic] is partnering with a Finnish health technology company called Oura Health Oy to offer its smart wearable- Oura ring, which can analyse a range of health metrics providing valuable insights for managing chronic metabolic conditions such as diabetes, pre-diabetes or obesity. Medical technology innovations have made it easier for patients to monitor ECG at home, detect mental health or sleep disorders, or diagnose chronic kidney disease at home.
Smartphone-based diagnostics provide low-cost, rapid, and handy self-diagnosis. According to the statistics from Statista, the smartphone penetration rates in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the world’s highest in the world. The government is prioritising expenditure on digital technologies, thereby improving the digital lifestyle of its citizens. This creates a huge growth opportunity for digital care services in this region. The mobile apps for telemedicine such as Cura Healthcare, My Clinic KSA, and Seha app are some Middle East-based digital health companies. Beyond teleconsultation, online pharmacy, home diagnostics, and wellness mobile applications are rising in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates market. By improving diagnostic accessibility and by providing information about disease and symptoms, patients and consumers are empowered to make informed decisions about their lifestyle choices, treatment options as well as providers.
Challenges and future outlook
The focus of the healthcare industry has shifted from a reactive, provider-centric, one-size-fits-all care model to a more proactive, patient or consumer-centric, personalised model, and this changing healthcare trend has brought in several patient-centric innovations. Digital technology provides improved value for care by lowering administrative costs, enabling fast decision-making, and saving time and resources. However, the costs of infrastructure for enterprise-level digital transformation, or the cost of a few point-of-care diagnostics or imaging devices are high, and high costs can limit the degree of adoption. Moreover, the poor digital literacy amongst the healthcare staff and even elderly patients remains a challenge. Currently, the lack of skilled professionals hinders the adoption of newer technologies in the healthcare sector. Healthcare enterprises must train their staff and make the digital interface user-friendly and easy to use. This will truly help in digital transformation.
Healthcare consumerism and digital transformation give rise to the growth opportunity of precision and preventative care. Analysing multimodal data from omics, clinical data, and electronic health records can help provide precision care to patients. This improves screening, and monitoring, and enables personalised treatment decisions.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year 74 per cent of global deaths are due to non-communicable chronic diseases. With the escalating costs and growing disease burden on healthcare systems associated with chronic diseases such as diabetes or hypertension, proactive disease management will be essential to control mortality and its high prevalence. The use of direct-to-consumer genetic tests, screening programs, and monitoring predictive biomarkers can determine the risk of developing a disease and individuals can take necessary interventions. Innovations in wellness mobile applications offering behavioural change using engaging gamification or virtual/augmented reality to promote good health practices will also be critical for preventative care.
Active partnership between the government, technology developers, and healthcare providers is essential to offer a collaborative ecosystem that supports healthcare consumerism. Besides adopting patient-centric innovations, empowering and educating the consumers, and improving digital health adoption will also be essential for consumerism of healthcare.
Debarati Sengupta is the Senior Industry Analyst/Team Lead (Medical Device and Imaging) at TechVision, Frost & Sullivan.
