The healthcare market in India is expected to reach USD 372 billion1 by 2022. Driven by rising incomes, greater health awareness and better health insurance, the industry has become one of India’s largest sectors – both in terms of revenue and employment.

As the ecosystem evolves, business and technology are going to be mutually driving each other in the future; digiceuticals or digital therapies being a case in point for the latter. Another interesting trend developing in the industry is the shift from a treatment-specific approach to a therapeutic and holistic approach. With medicine getting more personalized, the innovative application of artificial intelligence and machine learning will bring about non-invasive, digital solutions for diagnosis and treatment.

The next few years are expected to witness a paradigm shift with five technologies disrupting the healthcare industry, for the better: -

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): Conventional medicine requires doctors and other healthcare professionals to treat diseases based on the diagnosis of the patients’ health profiles. But even the best professional in the field may not have access to all the historical data, or the time and resources to analyze the same and advise the best course of action. That’s where AI and ML are revolutionizing the ecosystem. ML-based chatbots are bridging the data gap that may exist between patients and doctors, while AI is helping develop effective treatment plans.

Health analytics: Real-time monitoring through wearables is generating immense amounts of data. Healthcare providers can use this data to get a comprehensive picture of a patient’s health during their day-to-day life. Once the data is in the system, tools such as graphs, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and conversational analytics can help interpret the data, such as prescriptions, findings etc., bringing the vast and seemingly unrelated data together into a meaningful, cohesive form. This can then be used to predict the probability of a health condition to help doctors provide a diagnosis and treatment.

Augmented analytics: Technologies such as virtual/augmented reality are playing a key role in areas such as health education, imaging, mental health and rehabilitation of patients. They also open the gateway to new and innovative therapies that can help improve the overall patient experience. Further, these technologies can also help plan and communicate surgical interventions, taking multiple variables into account before the actual procedure itself, leading to better, more favourable outcomes.

Interoperability: This enables the various Healthcare Information Technologies (HIT) to communicate, exchange, analyze, interpret and use data consistently. As patients receive care across multiple locations, secure data exchange is crucial to providing continuity of care.

Blockchain: This is the scaffolding on which these core technologies stand. Blockchain is gaining wide popularity in healthcare, as it focuses on decentralizing patient data, allowing patients to assign access rules for their medical data, provide secure payment options and keep track of medications for patient data management, among other features.

However, the key to benefit from innovations in technology lies in cultivating the 5C’s of healthcare tech.

· The most important C for healthcare technology is consumer experience. Self-explanatory, intuitive systems that provide care at the place and time of the patient’s choice, with minimal manual intervention, form the foundation of a successful healthcare tech system.

· Clever, smarter systems based on a data-driven approach can assist consumers and physicians to make the right call and provide faster turnarounds.

· On the flip side, they also spell out concerns related to cybersecurity, especially for a generation that has grown up on smart, interconnected devices. The need, therefore, is to ensure the safety of confidential medical data of patients.

· Providing quality care to enable remote monitoring of patients outside of the conventional clinical settings is important as, at times, something as basic as doctor consultation is not available to people living in hard-to-access areas.

· This not only enhances the quality of care but also drastically reduces the cost of care, with lesser expenditure involved in spending on conveyance and numerous hospital bills, among other expenses.

As smart devices become the first point of contact for the healthcare industry, not to mention, sources of data and viable part of treatment, the coming years are sure to test the existing healthcare systems even further – and may even change them beyond recognition.