Digital Health revolution is around the corner and it won’t be long when this technology will start affecting our daily life and the way we consume healthcare products and services. The divide however is still a long one and from a consumer standpoint, there is a lack of understanding of what really entails digital health. This is an information gap which will definitely need to be addressed as more tangible products and solutions are available for consumers. Starting from purely consumer centric standpoint and layering, the current healthcare scenario wherein healthcare costs, budgets and spending are all under fire, one doubt that will need to be addressed is that a technology that does not provide any direct therapeutic and diagnostic benefit will only add to costs.
Healthcare costs are a touchy topic these days. While user case scenarios are built around digitization, collation, analytics and fine tuning of the therapy, augmentation how much real world benefit individual technologies provide would be a moot point always. Let’s look at the current understanding of Digital Health, in simple words it boils down to:
- Wiring the drug and/or devices consumed by patients.
- Wiring the patients themselves
- Real time data collection
- Analytics to evaluate the individual data to:
- develop newer algorithms
- perfect existing algorithms
- customize the delivery/therapy/augmentation based on individual need.
- design population health studies
An understanding of this scenario purely from a consumerist and economic basis will drive the question back to couple of classic healthcare riddles:
- Is this technology for mass consumption or exclusive in nature?
- How will the cost increase with Digital Health adoption in healthcare issues which are being managed with traditional methods?
- What would be benefit and will these benefits overcome the cost escalations?
- Are there scenarios, diseases and disorders which greatly benefit from digital health technology?
- Will Digital health technology have a massive impact in certain complex to treat and expensive healthcare challenges while remaining benefiting only marginally in all other scenarios?
As the technology matures and more real life solutions start pouring in wherein the healthcare provider and consumer both see a significant benefit for a modest to significant cost escalation, that would be the true beginning of a digital health revolution.
