The tech industry is continuing to revolutionize the way people experience healthcare. Here are several new developments poised to disrupt in 2018 and beyond.
Health Tech
Annual healthcare spending is over $3 trillion dollars nationally and continuing to climb.
But new health tech has already begun to disrupt the industry, revolutionizing the relationship between patient and doctor. These developments improve access to information, illuminate alternative treatment possibilities, and shrink costs for patients and providers alike.
The next decade will see a drastic and accelerated shift in the healthcare industry, ultimately making it more personalized and patient-focused.
Here are several new developments at the forefront of this disruption.
Big Data
As the healthcare industry catches up to the business and political sectors that are already putting big data analytics to great use, it will continue to see a positive change in patient-doctor interaction.
The application of big data is an important element in shifting patient treatment from reactive to predictive. Doctors are able to better identify risk factors before they become expensive problems. And collaboration between the healthcare community is easier and more accurate.
The drug development industry can also expect continued disruption from big data. As information is more centralized and analysis is made increasingly easy by artificial intelligence, start-up pharmaceutical companies and research labs can better insert themselves into the industry and push innovation.
Rise of Artificial Intelligence
The increasing prominence of AI will greatly benefit patients, allowing for quicker, more accurate diagnoses and lowering their overall costs.
It is a particularly useful health tech because it can elevate the quality of medical research by analyzing information beyond the scope of traditional databases or spread across many sources. AI improves communication and record keeping between doctors.
Better diagnoses lead to better treatments and better patient outcomes.
AI is also a valuable anti-fraud tool. Insurance companies can use fraud prevention.
AI to identify cases, potentially saving Americans hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Gene Editing
The development of CRSPR/Cas9 technology is a major disruption to the health industry and opens new possibilities for curing and preventing illnesses.
The food industry and others have already put gene modification to practical use. As health tech catches up, we will see major shifts in treatment options and new ethical questions surrounding healthcare.
The prospect of reliably and inexpensively altering human DNA makes CRSPR an exciting health tech breakthrough. Its funding continues to climb and industry professionals should expect to see increasing prominence in both research applications and therapeutic practices.
3D Printing
Health professionals are already utilizing 3D technology in treating patients by creating customized prosthetics, hearing aids, dental implants, and other medical devices.
This innovation reduces surgery time and cuts down on costs. But the industry is just scratching the surface on the possibilities of 3D printing.
The next disruptive frontier is printing 3D human organs. The potential to eliminate the illegal organ trade and provide transplants for the millions of patients on a waitlist for kidneys, livers, or even hearts is groundbreaking.
Within the next 10 years, 3D printing for the health industry is expected to be a $6 billion dollar industry.
Software Development for Health Tech
Your goal is to serve your patients better and conduct meaningful research that will shape the industry. We are committed to putting you on the cutting edge of the healthcare disruption.
We create powerful tools and healthcare software for the healthcare industry that improve the patient-doctor relationship and enhance security and communication.
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