Digital health 2020

We asked digital health leaders what trends will dominate medical technologies in 2020. Perspectives of John Sharp (Thought Advisory at the Personal Connected Health Alliance), Koen Kas Healthcare (Futurist and CEO/Founder of the Healthskouts), and Lionel Reichardt known as Pharmageek (expert in the digital transformation of the pharma industry), Denise Silber (Founder of the Doctors 2.0 & You), and Professor Shafi Ahmed (surgeon, futurist, and innovator).

JOHN SHARP Director and Thought Advisory at the Personal connected health Alliance

Digital Health Trends in 2020 will include many patient-facing innovations.

John Sharp, among many others, is an adjunct faculty at the Kent State University (Health Informatics Program) and a member of the International Editorial Board at the ICT&Health International. Existing trends, which are at the pilot phase, will begin to scale. For instance, virtual reality for pain control now has enough evidence to be recommended as an alternative for many pain control treatments. It could become a first-line treatment and alternative to opioids in some cases.

Digital health treatments, which are already scaling – such as managing and prevention of chronic conditions like Type 2 Diabetes – will continue to gain acceptance among employers, insurers, and perhaps even some government programs, and thus become broadly available. These virtual coaching apps will broaden their scope to many chronic conditions. For example, COPD, asthma, hypertension, and heart disease, especially as value-based care begins to have an impact.

Remote patient monitoring will also begin to scale in these value-based programs as a method to monitor chronic conditions on a daily or continuous basis, and as the data can be summarized in a dashboard for providers and patients.

Telehealth visits will become more widely adopted both for one-off consultations but also for more continuous contact for patients with their healthcare providers. Also, better quality standards will be created and applied for telehealth visits.

Finally, patients will generally be more involved in their care. They will also take a more active role in digital health projects, including becoming active consumers, participating on advisory boards, and the growth of co-design.

KOeN KAS Healthcare Futurist and CEO/Founder of the Healthskouts

I won’t make a classical list of trends like AI, 5G, VR, and so on. It is the list from me, and my team’s experience working

Koen Kas has published two books. „Sick no more” describes how we will transition from reactive sick-care to pro-active healthcare. „Your guide to Delight” is a roadmap towards Creating health, dealing with change, introducing our personal Digital Twin.

with care organizations, hospitals, pharma, tech plays entering the healthcare space. From helping start-ups and scaleups, big incumbents, and governments to absorb and adopt digital health developments in their organizations.

Here are my personal five digital health trends in 2020: • Mobile health apps reimbursements will take off. Legislation in Germany got a lot of publicity, but other countries are getting ready as well. There is a vast interest in the certified digital health apps database we curate, for instance. It is now being used in pharma to teach how the emerging digital revolution gets shape. We start to see the number of entries increases beyond linear. • First, real-world datasets are supporting the benefits of adopting digital health in the clinic. A good example is a proof that VR can treat acute pain beyond a well-controlled hospital setting. Such data will build trust. I believe that becomes the key trend for 2020 • I think we’re going to experience a shift from a “push attitude” of the digital health technologies (driven by engineers in startups and tech companies) to the “pull-attitude” (inspired by actual health care providers like physicians, specialists, and nurses). Medical professionals can describe use cases best and know what is needed to remove friction in the healthcare system. • As every company is bound to become a health company, the non-obvious, non-traditional plays will speed up the adoption rate of digital health tools, pointing them towards consumers. Think food, beverage, dairy companies capturing consumer mental state to adapt their offering. See how Black+Decker worked with Pillo Health to develop a technology to help adults and their caregivers proactively manage their health at home. • 2020 will be the year the concept of a “Human digital twin” will become a thing. A digital twin is a real-time replica of something in the physical world. In healthcare, that replica is the lifelong data record of an individual. Digital twins can assist doctors and pharma in determining the possibilities for a successful outcome of a procedure or treatment, help make therapy decisions, and manage chronic diseases. Ultimately, digital twins will become patient/citizen companions to keep them healthy. A bit like Baymax in Disney’s Big Hero 6. Digital twins are fed with data from emerging digital health tools.

Lionel reichardt spent the past 15 years working within the pharmaceutical industry. Today he synthesizes these experiences to rethink the customer journey and build new models of promotion and information in healthcare.

LIONeL reIchArDT Pharmageek, Founder of the 7C’s Health

The big trend for 2020 is that digital health will be no more trend. It’s been almost ten years now that digital health lives at the pace of technology trends and buzzwords. Patient empowerment, connected health, artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual reality – so many topics to feed the business of conferences and ambient communication. Here comes the time for maturity. The time for institutions to frame digital health and make it possible on a larger scale. The time for scientific publications to relay digital health research and establish the potential and reality of this sector. The time for training to allow healthcare professionals to be able to build, use, and prescribe these solutions. The time for digital therapeutics to target specific issues to improve the health of individuals and populations. The time for patients to be taken seriously in their quest for greater autonomy and better management of their health. Digital health will finally begin to keep its promises and become a reality.

DeNISe SILBer Founder of the Doctors 2.0 & You

It’s a New Year’s tradition to announce new trends in digital health technology. Yet, the previous year’s trends don’t really disappear. Digital health technologies are likely to be around for decades before the average patient gets to benefit from them, if at all. Health systems, providers, and other stakeholders have to keep abreast of multiple technologies and juggle with many uncertainties.

Denise Silber is a global thought leader and social media influencer based in Paris, a native New Yorker. She has devoted 20+ years of her professional life to digital health intending to improve life for patients.

Artificial Intelligence is grabbing a lot of attention in healthcare. It occupies the headlines with spectacular claims, and its applications are endless: drug development, diagnosis, personalized medicine, patient monitoring. Babylon Health, with its AI chatbot, was valued at $2B in 2019. Sales for the health chatbot market were estimated at only $36.5M in 2018. Nonetheless, Accenture predicts that AI will reach $6.6B in 2021.

A favorite of mine is Virtual Reality. VR is not only effective; it is also riding on the societal trend of improving the human experience with tech. VR is segmented into education, training, and simulation on the one hand, and pain management, rehabilitation, and post-traumatic stress disorder on the other, and there are additional therapeutic benefits. The global VR for the healthcare market was estimated at $260M in 2018 and could reach $3.4B by 2027.

Blockchain is a hot topic because it seems to respond to a worldwide cry for greater transparency and trust around health data. This market was estimated at $44.6M in 2017 and could grow at 67.1% per year through 2023.

At the same time, telemedicine, a decades-old, not particularly sophisticated technology, is coming of age. Between its B2B tele-expertise market (teleradiology, telepathology, telecardiology, teledermatology) and B2C real-time distance consultation and at-home diagnostics, telemedicine benefits from a growing societal need for on-demand service anywhere, anytime. The telemedicine market, forecast to reach $30.12 B by 2026, would be second only to another decades-old market, the electronic medical record, forecast at $38 B in 2025!

I will end with another digital health trend that interests us all. It is not a specific technology but a goal, and that is to achieve “human augmentation using technology.” Multiple product categories can help enhance a person’s cognitive and physical experiences: sensors, implants, exoskeletons, prosthetics.

PrOFeSSOr ShAFI AhMeD Surgeon, futurist and innovator

2019 was the era of hype. I think 2020 will be the year of real-world applications and there will be a fundamentally better understanding of AI and its possibilities and limitations. The NHS will have an investment of £250 million for an AI Lab to help solve some of healthcare’s toughest challenges, including earlier cancer detection, discovering new treatments, and relieving the workload on the NHS. 2020 will also see the launch of the first AI University in Abu Dhabi opening in September, educating some of the global workforces to deliver these ambitions. 2020 will be the year of the “surgical robot wars” as new players are coming into the market to challenge the domination of the Da Vinci. Cambridge Medical Robotics, Medtronic, Johnson & John-

Professor Shafi Ahmed is a multi-awardwinning surgeon, teacher, futurist, innovator, and entrepreneur. He is an international keynote speaker and is a faculty at Singularity University.

son/Google, Dexter amongst others will be releasing more affordable, modular and portable robots, which will reduce the capital’s costs and price per procedure.

We will also gain a better understanding of how to manage large amounts of patient data. The year 2019 highlighted issues of patient confidentiality with major tech firms. This needs a consensus in 2020 to allow data-driven healthcare to empower decision making for clinicians and patients.

The rollout of 5G will help facilitate the internet of medical things. It may be the missing piece of the jigsaw to allow wearables and sensors to assist real-time monitoring as well as powering telemedicine, telepresence and even telesurgery.

Virtual Reality will finally be offered to patients for a variety of medical illnesses that may be reimbursed by the payer as an alternative to conventional medical therapies. 