Before COVID-19 the adoption of digital transformation in healthcare was slow but after the pandemic, the healthcare domain has accelerated and overwhelmed emerging technology in healthcare. In 2021, the global digital health market reached a value of $289 billion.
The Research and Markets publisher anticipated the market to reach $881 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 20.14% from 2022 to 2027. As per the 2021 Future of Healthcare Report, nearly 80% of businesses plan to boost their investment in digital healthcare trends.
Here we’ll discuss why digital transformation trends are important for the healthcare industry? This article is all about emerging healthcare trends that embrace digital healthcare transformation in upcoming years.
What is digital transformation in healthcare?
The term digital transformation in healthcare refers to the implementation of technologies and collection of both developments and innovations in the digital technology that improves healthcare operations.
The use of the latest technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud technologies, VR etc. The medical data, records, pharmaceutical orders, laboratory results, and other healthcare-related services are efficiently handled with the help of modern technology.
IoT devices, wearable gadgets, medical data monitoring, and other digital technologies bring a great impact on making the healthcare industry more advanced and easily accessible.
The adoption of the new digital technologies has opened up new business models, advanced techniques to cure the disease and much more productive as well as efficient opportunities.
Benefits of Digital Transformation in Healthcare
The following are some benefits of digital transformation in the healthcare industry:
- Coordination of doctor-patient becomes easy and seamless.
- Centralization of patient information for better management, storage and access.
- Secure medical data of the patient.
- Real-time access to the health information of the patient.
- Easy online appointment with the doctor.
- The use of technologies reduces manual mistakes.
- Create and implement the personalized journey of patients.
- Share the medical history of the patient across multiple platforms to take expert advice.
Uses of Digital Transformation in Healthcare
Digital transformation helps to make a thorough analysis of the patient history. And can diagnose and treat the patient more efficiently. The core objective to use healthcare IT solutions is to automate the workflow processes and reduce costs.
- On-demand healthcare solutions enable the medical staff to provide services to the patients as per their expertise.
- Virtual doctor consultations enable the meeting with the doctor from anywhere at any time and this can be cost-effective. After the pandemic, around 83% of the patients are using telemedicine where they schedule appointments to interact with a medical professional using video chats and can receive prescriptions.
- People are conscious about their health and they use wearable gadgets to track and monitor their health data to be fit. The wearable mobile apps help to keep a track of heart rate, oxygen level, calories burnt, blood sugar level and many more.
5 Key Trends of Digital Transformation in Healthcare
The digital transformation trend in the healthcare industry is the positive impact of technology. Artificial Intelligence enabled medical devices, telemedicine, blockchain ecosystem to keep health records, etc. are a few examples of digital transformation in healthcare.
Let’s have a look at the different digital transformation trends in healthcare.
Artificial Intelligence
AI in the healthcare market was valued at $8.23 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to reach $194.4 billion by 2030 at a growing CAGR of 38.1% from 2021 to 2030 – Allied Market Research.
Artificial Intelligence enabled technology helps patients to improve their living standards and have proper control of their health. Following are the few areas that can be impacted by AI-enabled healthcare:
- Reduction in clinical errors.
- Diagnosis of patients becomes more accurate.
- Easy to monitor the health of the patients.
- Generates the automatic health reports
- Operational expenditure reduces
- Electronic Health Records (EHR) and medical images of the patients can be analysed in a better and more accurate way.
Last but not the least, Artificial Intelligence improves the decision-making, processing of information, diagnosis of the patient becomes efficient and speedy. This helps the doctor to start with treatment of the patient and can cure the disease with the right approach.
Blockchain Technology
The implementation of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry ensures quick and secure access to the records of the patients. It securely generates the transaction history of patients to eliminate medical frauds.
In addition, blockchain solutions offer advanced security, a smart payment system, settlement of claims without delays, timely access to the health records of patients for advanced treatment.
The Global Blockchain in Healthcare market size is expect to reach $1189.8 million by 2028 at a growing CAGR of 61.3%. According to BIS Research, the global spending on blockchain in healthcare is predict to soar by $5.61 billion by 2025.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality (VR) offers viable solutions to some of the most complex problems of the healthcare system. It enables the doctor to deliver the best treatment to their patients. It utilizes a computer-generated simulation of a 3-D image or environment that allows an individual to hear, see and interact using special equipment.
VR technology helps the doctor to perform complex surgery with fewer chances of errors
According to Allied Market Research, the global virtual reality in healthcare market size was value at $240 million in 2018. And is predicted to reach $2,383 million by 2026 at a growing CAGR of 33.18% from 2019 to 2026.
VR supports surgeons to visualize potential obstacles before performing surgeries. The implementation of VR in the medical industry can bring fruitful results in the treatment of patients.
Growth of wearable devices
The digital transformation in healthcare is companies collecting their health data from medical devices which including wearable technology. The global wearable healthcare market is anticipate to reach $30.1 billion by 2026 from $16.2 billion in 2021 at a growing CAGR of 13.2%.
Some most common devices include heart rate sensors, exercise trackers, sweat metres and oximeters. The sweat metres are use by diabetic patients to monitor their blood sugar levels.
Oximeters are use to monitor the amount of oxygen carry in the blood and are often use by patients with respiratory illnesses such as asthma.
Remote Patient Monitoring
The wearable devices can monitor the sugar level, track blood pressure and other vitals remotely. With Telemedicine, visiting doctors in person is no longer need. The help of electronic devices and software allows the patients to conduct video and audio appointments with doctors.
Remote Patient Monitoring helps the patients to stay in touch with their doctors during the entire treatment process to manage critical illnesses. Furthermore, healthcare professionals can easily monitor patients’ health data by providing them with a set of wearable measuring devices.
Future of Healthcare Technology
Healthcare technology trends for 2022 are expect to improve patient care and healthcare service. Emerging technology reduces the chances of error in diagnosing patients’ diseases and reduces the healthcare cost.
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science and Extend reality, focus more will be paid to improving data security and regulatory compliance.
Last but not the least, digital transformation is a continuous process that comes with the latest trends. And implementation in the healthcare industry with each passing day. You can always get in touch with healthcare app development services to select the technological trends.
