As populations will need to increasingly rely on self-care models during the pandemic, experts reflect on the key ways this will transform the landscape of healthcare delivery in the New Year.
With a new coronavirus variant afoot and an uncertain 12 months ahead, MobiHealthNews has compiled 2021 predictions on the key themes that will affect the digital health industry during a potentially turbulent year. We hear from a range of EMEA-based health and tech leaders on the continued efforts to close the health equity gap, the growth of self-care apps, VR technology, employer technology investments and the improved use of health data.
Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of UK-based self-care app, Healthily
“I think people are now feeling more empowered because of the advances in mobile technology and ubiquitous, affordable connectivity. This feeling of empowerment translates in the desire to take more control of one’s life: from finance to dating, from travel to healthcare. Health is somewhat the laggard of the digital era so I expect 2021 to be the year in which the majority of mobile users will start turning to their devices to better understand their health and how to improve it.
“COVID-19 has changed the world and, sadly, it will stay with us in some shape or form for the foreseeable future. People are learning the hard way that self-care is the most important type of care and I expect 2021 to be a big year for people looking to manage whatever health situation they can on their own.
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“Healthily took many years to build because of its complexity and focus on patient safety. This year we are finally ready to go to market and our app will empower everyone who uses it to take control of their health with AI self-assessments, the most reliable health library in the world, the most versatile and secure journal and a range of bespoke hubs for the management of the most common self-carable conditions.”
Dr Philipp Wustrow, Swiss teledermatology platform OnlineDoctor
“The field of dermatology is undergoing profound change. We expect this trend to continue and even accelerate in 2021 due to the pandemic.
“We have an increasing number of dermatologists in our network who wish to spend over 50% of their working time in the home office and they assume that a significant proportion of their future work will involve digital communication with patients. In this regard, we expect asynchronous communication between dermatologists and patients to prevail over traditional video-consultations.
“We sense a significant increase in openness from physicians and patients to take advantage of teledermatology. Thus, we anticipate that teledermatology will become an integral part of the treatment and diagnosis of dermatology cases in 2021.
“In 2021, we will observe that there will be a “bottom-up” effect from patients who actively request and expect the possibility of teledermatology consultation. In addition, there will be an increased “top-down” effect from physicians actively promoting teledermatology services to their patients. Dermatology will appear in a new guise in 2021, a digital one.”
Prof Daan Dohmen, CEO of Netherlands-based remote patient monitoring platform, Luscii
“In 2020 we saw digital healthcare take significant strides forward. More and more healthcare sectors introduced different forms of teleconsultations in order to stay connected with their patients in times where hospital capacities were stretched. But this is just the start.
“More healthcare organisations will start organising new “front doors” using digital apps for their existing and new patients. These digital triage systems able to triage patients even before they leave to go to the doctor or hospital will become more important as A&E and GP resources are stretched in the fight against COVID. With this, patients can be screened and connected to the right care professional or self-help immediately away. It could be seen as the next generation of 111.
“During COVID-19 remote monitoring of patients is used in many trusts as a method to keep a ‘finger to the pulse’ of patients with chronic diseases such as COPD and heart failure. Different projects, like the virtual ward project in Sunderland (UK), showed how the data collected creates a full picture of how patients are doing at home negating the need for regular hospital visits. In 2021, the available data will be used even more intelligently by adding artificial intelligence capabilities to help doctors and nurses intervene at just the right moment in time.
“Virtual wards – as set up during COVID-19 – show that healthcare needs transformation on the way budgeting is done. Instead of budgeting based on ‘activities’, we will see more and more budgeting based on subscriptions. Patients will get access to 24/7 remote care and will be regularly checked by the technology and nurses within the virtual ward. This will lead to earlier patient discharges and reduced hospital admissions. It is the future of integrated care systems!”
Roberto Ascione, group CEO and founder of global digital health company, Healthware Group
“The inevitable invisibility of digital health, and by that I mean, as with other industries, when technology starts to dematerialise. Digital health will start to be woven into everyday objects more and more. We’re starting to see this happen through the emergence of smart homes and smart cars (i.e. the steering wheel measuring the heart rate). As more data is collected passively, there will be greater opportunities for integration.
“Ageing in place will become more common as baby boomers age and feel more comfortable leveraging tools like remote monitoring, telehealth and disease management platforms. Living independently will be critical to this age group and digital health tools will help support them in that endeavor leading to an explosion of adoption and growth in the overall industry as a result. This is evident in the amount of investment in the category.
“We expect to see what we call, “Health Data as a Service” (HDaS). As an increasing number of solutions and devices generate increasing amounts of health data, there is a greater need for aggregators of that data in a useful way for consumers. Consumers want and need tools to make sense of all that data. They also want to ensure they know who has access to that data, and control over where that data can flow. So, we expect to see more tools supporting consumers in this way.”
Laurent Vandebrouck, CEO of France-based digital health and remote monitoring company, Chronolife
“In some EU countries such as France, the Nordics, etc., remote patient monitoring (RPM) has been reimbursed by the payers for the last two years for certain types of chronic diseases (CHF, COPD, diabetes). Back in 2019, the adoption and prescription of RPM to patients discharged from hospitals was really slow, but the COVID-19 crisis has been an incredible accelerator of RPM to ensure that only patients needing critical inpatient care are (re)admitted to hospitals, during a time of continued healthcare resources shortage.
“As a consequence and as an example, the French payer has decided to extend to all CHF patients the reimbursement of RPM services. This means that the RPM market will dramatically increase in the coming two years, but the payer and regulator will have to support and push for a consolidation of the market to ease the job of the healthcare professionals, who are sometimes lost with numerous RPM solutions for which they have difficulties to assess and choose which ones to allocate and prescribe to the patient. The payer and regulator will also have to push for interoperability between the different RPM solutions at the medical device and service platform levels. These two challenges must be met in order to realise our intended objective for RPM’s mass adoption and in reducing the overall healthcare cost for all stakeholders.”
Source: mobihealth News