inVerita Insights into 2022: Global Healthcare Sector Analysis: Emerging Stronger after the Pandemic

Global Healthcare Sphere Issues in 2022

#1 Telehealth Explosion

Pandemic-induced telehealth boom grew upon as both patients and providers were looking for ways to safely access and deliver healthcare. According to McKinsey & Company, in April 2020, telehealth utilization for office visits and outpatient care was 78 times higher in comparison to February 2020. 

In the epoch of the pandemic, telehealth offered a bridge between consumers and providers that were able to meet all regulatory changes and enable much better access and reimbursement. As of July 2021, telehealth usage has ballasted at levels 38 times higher than before the pandemic outbreak. Doctors of all specialties have seen a rise in telehealth visits from 13% to 17%. Correspondingly, investment in virtual care and telehealth also increased 3 times with the level of venture capital in 2020, if compared to 2017.

By 2027, the telehealth market size is expected to reach $559.52 billion with a CAGR of 25.2%. The key factors that impact such rapid growth include:

• Established positive effects of telemedicine health control;
• Fast growth in medical expenses for government and private fields;
• Urgent need for effective need prevention and treatment of COVID-19;
• Significant physiological impact on patients of the pandemic;
• A shift to consumer-oriented delivery of medical treatment.

The rising demand for instant counseling, lack of doctors, social distancing, and huge workloads of medical centers have accelerated the adoption of telemedicine. According to Medical Economics, 83% of patients state that they don’t plan to stop using telemedicine applications even when the global lockdown is over.

#2 Building Digital Solutions to Ease Physician Load

Clinician burnout was considered a global health crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 60% of healthcare providers reporting at least one symptom of burnout. Under significantly increased workloads, physicians faced an urgent need for digital-first models of care that could help them mitigate the stress and reduced time spent on administrative tasks. Electronic health records, or EHRs, have become a golden standard in reducing paperwork and saving physicians’ time.

EHR stands for a system intended for medical data capture, storage, and exchange. The solution has already gone far from a single assigned physician and involves clinical and laboratory personnel, emergency facilities, pharmaceutical stores, and other parties involved in healthcare. These systems allow physicians and other healthcare providers to instantly access patients’ information, safely exchange data, facilitate diagnostics and prevent errors, cut costs, reduce paperwork, streamline the billing process, and finally, handle all these processes securely, in compliance with HIPAA law.

In 2018, 92.1% of office-based physicians in the US used EMR/EHR systems while 2.26 billion prescriptions were sent electronically in 2020. In 2022 and beyond, EHRs will continue becoming an indispensable tool not only for clinicians but the patients they serve with rates higher than ever at around 89%. Though with some significant changes are strongly required. 

According to a Stanford Medicine survey, 59% of physicians mentioned that their EHR systems needed significant changes. Most EHR/EMR software was built on obsolete platforms with very poor UX, as they started as billing systems slowly adding new functions. Healthcare providers will be forced to rebuild their outdated and unfriendly systems, implementing changes into them: leveraging more AI and IoT for more accurate data analytics, blockchain technology to ensure data security, and wearables to boost patient health engagement.

# 3 Cyber Threats as a Major Problem in Healthcare Industry

Cyber-attacks remain a top industry risk within healthcare. According to Breach reports to the Office for Civil Rights, 225 hacking-related incidents were recorded in the timespan from January to June 2021 and affected more than 21 million people. Such attacks involve stealing valuable patient information and demanding payment from healthcare organizations to retrieve the stolen information.

• In 2015, Anthem (formerly known as WellPoint) disclosed that hackers received access to a corporate database through a phishing email. The lawbreakers stole around 79 million records that included names, medical IDs, Social Security and insurance membership numbers, and employment information. The largest healthcare cyberattack in history cost Anthem Inc $115 million and resulted in the triplication of its cybersecurity budget.
• In 2018, the unknown hacker accessed and stole patient data consisting of medical and payment card information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and addresses from the American Medical Collection Agency which served billing collections for Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, and other healthcare providers. The attack affected 26 million people and resulted in the company's bankruptcy.
• A phishing email that had been sent to a Premera Blue Cross employee led to the data breach that cost the company $74 million. The employee clicked the link that was included in the email and downloaded the document that enabled hackers to access Premera's server. The company couldn’t detect the breach for eight months and hired a cybersecurity consulting company. Premera paid $74 million to settle a class-action lawsuit which was the result of a data breach.
• In 2015, Excellus Health Plan Inc reported that the personal information of more than 10 million customers might be exposed as a result of a cyberattack that happened in 2013. The third party, hired to conduct a forensic review, found out that a large amount of Excellus client data was compromised. Despite the fact that affected data was encrypted, the hackers got access to administrative protocols, making the encryption moot.
• In 2011, the medical records of millions of military patients and their families were stolen as a result of a data breach in Science Application International Corporation. The records of 4.9 million people were stolen from a data contractor’s car as they were stored on backup tapes.   

Such incidents regularly happen in the healthcare industry: the University of California in 2014, Advocate Medical Group in 2013, Medical Informatics Engineering in 2015, and many more organizations became victims of cyberattacks, losing millions of dollars and most important - their patients’ trust. Given the critical role of data security in the industry, healthcare providers must make a genuine effort to protect patients’ information and steer clear of the misfortune of many organizations that suffered from data breaches. 

#4 A Flexible and Responsive Supply Chain Long-Term

Within the healthcare industry, the supply chain encompasses pharmaceutical products that are critical for a high standard of care for patients and provide supplies of medication for pharmacies. It is estimated that the supply chain includes 30% of operational costs for hospitals. One of the major problems in healthcare in 2021 and rolling over into 2022 was the understanding that supply chains became inflexible and were built on outdated frameworks. Therefore it’s vital for healthcare providers to manage supply chains efficiently and meet the cost objectives, facing the following issues:

• Product life cycle. As soon as the product is patented, it might take up to eight years to turn it into something that can be marketed. When the patent expires, alternative products can enter the market, or companies can reduce the product price. New technologies are reducing life cycles creating new pressures on distribution channels.
• Profit margins. Even though separate units of pharmaceutical products are rather expensive, operating margins are not so in the wholesaler sector particularly because of hospitals’, retailers’, and manufacturers’ control over the pricing.
• Forecasting. The difficulty to predict the exact demand for medicines is because of the absence of accurate data on consumption and the lack of standard nomenclature for healthcare products.
• Lack of supply chain education. Managers are not well informed and equipped to control the supply of medication.

All the aforementioned issues will be actively addressed by healthcare providers in 2022 through the implementation of e-procurement systems to significantly reduce purchasing costs by the consolidation of supplier networks, ERP systems to provide an automated and paperless format for information to communicate through organizations.

The Benefits of Digital Transformation in Healthcare                    

Technologies that Drive Innovation in Healthcare Industry

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence is rewiring the traditional concept of healthcare delivery at hyper-speed. According to Accenture, the growth of AI implementation is already accelerating, by 2021 it has been estimated to reach $6.6 billion which is a compound annual growth rate of 40% compared to $600 million in 2014.

In the healthcare industry, Artificial Intelligence represents an umbrella term that unites a range of technologies, enabling machines to sense, comprehend, act and learn. Presenting opportunities across a variety of therapy areas, diagnostics, wearables, and virtual assistants, AI helps healthcare organizations to meet the increasing demand for interoperability and digital expectations from customers.

One of the most forms of Artificial intelligence, machine learning, enables decision-making by processing and finding patterns in big data sets. It consists of algorithms that are used to learn from data independently without human intervention.

• Diagnostics and medical imaging

In 2015, medical error and misdiagnosing accounted for 10% of all US deaths. Over the past couple of years, AI has substantially expanded in the fields of diagnostics and medical imaging, enabling medical researchers and doctors to deliver flawless clinical practice. Speeding up standardization and quantification, deep learning not only helps to prevent errors and improve test outcomes, it also improves the assessment in medical imaging to detect malignancy and Diabetic Retinopathy (DR).

Enlitic, the 5th smartest AI company in the world, develops deep learning medical tools to streamline radiology diagnosis. Through analyzing unstructured medical data such as radiology images, EKGs, blood tests, etc, the platform gives doctors better insights into a patient's current state.

• Diseases prediction

The healthcare industry operates vast volumes of patient records. Using machine learning tools to store and analyze this data, healthcare providers can address a large number of diseases before their occurrence. Currently, data mining is used for the development of early detection systems. 

Freenome leverages AI in screening, blood work, and diagnostic tests to examine for cancer. This allows it to detect cancer in its earliest stages and afterward develop new treatments.

• Surgery and emergency room

Da Vinci Surgery System, developed 15 years ago, was the first surgical robot approved by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery. Since then, a big number of AI and ML-powered surgical robots have been introduced. Cognitive robotics is able to integrate pre-operation medical records with real-time operating metrics to guide and improve doctor’s instrument precision.

With advanced medical cognitive and NLP capabilities, IBM Watson is able to respond to surgeons’ queries. Such AI-powered platforms can monitor blood in real-time, provide navigating support in arthroscopy and open surgery, and detect physical responses to pain.

Blockchain

In the period of time from 2009 to 2017, more than 176 million patient records were exposed in data breaches, including medical records, credit card, and banking information.

Such disappointing statistics make security the most vulnerable point of healthcare digitization. The usage of blockchain technology helps mitigate such risks by securely encrypting and transferring patient data, managing the medicine supply chain, and even outbreak of harmful diseases. One of the countries with the biggest blockchain potential is Estonia. The country has been using blockchain since 2012 to secure medical information and process transactions. Today, 95% of Estonian healthcare data and 99% of prescription information is digital while all of the country’s healthcare billing is handled on the blockchain. Some other blockchain applications in healthcare include:

• Supply chain transparency

By leveraging blockchain, healthcare providers can develop a single system to store, continuously update health records, and ensure secure and fast retrieval by authorized users. The existence of such a unified system helps to avoid mistakes and miscommunication, ensure faster and more accurate diagnosis, and provide each patient with more personalized care. 

• Smart contracts for supply chain and insurance settlements

Blockchain-based systems are used by healthcare providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and wholesalers to authenticate their identities as organizations, track transactions and payments, and log contract details. Fully digital and automated environments help drastically cut down disputes over payment chargeback claims for prescription medications and other goods.

Chronicled states that as a result of a change of pricing structures, there are over one million chargeback claims made between actors annually, more than 5% of which are disputed, requiring lengthy manual resolution.

• Patient-centric EHRs

According to 2016 Johns Hopkins University research, the third leading cause of death in the US was medical errors as a result of poorly coordinated care. Errors and omissions in patient records have become a problem that healthcare systems in many countries are struggling with. A blockchain-based system for medical records, linked to existing EMR software can easily solve this problem.

Medicalchain is a great example of a company that helps healthcare providers implement blockchain-enabled EMRs

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

By implementing VR & AR technologies, many healthcare companies have managed to establish connections with their patients in terms of the pandemic, providing remote and personalized care. Passed have the times when the technologies were exclusively devoted to the gaming industry. In 2021 and beyond, VR & AR will be actively used for medical training, physical therapy, post-traumatic stress treatment, and some other purposes:

• Medical Immersion for a variety of patient needs

Healthcare providers actively leverage VR & AR technologies to enhance their patients’ experiences by engaging them in healthcare activities. A good example is the implementation of VR apps for planning the sequence of procedures and viewing the results in aesthetic medicine and orthodontia. These solutions can be also used for improved self-diagnostics and self-guided treatment in remote areas where people mainly use telemedicine. Another implementation of AR is mapping assisting which users can define the nearest clinics in unknown areas, which is especially useful in case of emergency.

• Preparation for surgery

Surgeons can use VR & AR solutions before performing an operation to walk through the organs or view 3D models of challenging surgical cases. What is more, such 3D organ models can serve illustrative purposes in the learning process or explain to patients the whole surgery process. According to a Harvard Business Review study, surgeons that trained with VR solutions had a 230% boost in their performance in comparison to their traditionally trained colleagues.

Such software programs provided by Osso VR and Immersive Touch are already in active use and give promising results. 

• Pain treatment

The technology has also been proven to be effective in reducing pain. The research shows that patients who suffered from post-surgical, cardiac, or gastrointestinal pain, have shown a decline in pain levels while using VR to distract them from painful stimuli. Also, women in labor who were equipped with VR headsets to visualize soothing landscapes managed to more easily get through labor pain.   

Digital is a New Normal

A health industry that has found itself fighting in the dark with the consequences of the pandemic will strongly need to adjust to big pressure due to increasing competition, new government regulations, rising costs, and customer demand for a higher quality of service.

Such factors as security issues and data breaches, lack of patient confidentiality, and transparency will hamper the market growth. Though the healthcare deal activity will still remain robust as investors and executives will be looking to reposition themselves for post-pandemic growth.

In 2022, the healthcare system will strongly need real-time insights to forecast the challenges and address them by being equipped with the latest technologies. The implementation of artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and VR&AR will play a crucial role in diagnostics, disease predictions, surgery preparation, and will significantly reduce expenses and improve the experience for both: patients and healthcare providers.

About inVerita

inVerita is a trusted technology partner to healthcare providers, offering a wide spectrum of consulting, design, engineering operations, and technology solutions. We engineer scalable health information exchange systems, cloud-based telehealth software, patient engagement solutions, EHR & EMR software, and support any kind of clinical software development specifically tailored to the requirements of your organization.