Integration of technology into healthcare and life sciences industry has shown a positive uptick in the recent years and the corpus of investments has ramped up significantly, said Jeff Heenan-Jalil, senior vice president & global head, Healthcare, Life Sciences & Services, Wipro Limited.
The coming year will see these investments come to a fruition to achieve a truly holistic healthcare ecosystem. The industry comprising hospitals, insurance companies, medical devices and the pharmaceuticals are now transcending to adopt digitization, big data, cloud computing, analytics, robotics & automation, security & data privacy, he added.
With the penetration of technology in this industry, the lines between these sectors are merging fast, making way for Connected Healthcare, said Jeff Heenan-Jalil.
Some of the key trends that have been noted in the past few years that have transformed the healthcare and pharmaceuticals is the move to go paper less. The industry has adopted going the digital way. “Digitization began with the need to go paperless and collating patient data to ensure that data is stored in a safe and easily accessible manner. This is driving new age technology such as, Internet of Things (IoT). There is a profusion of health apps, devices, and medical devices, driving high volumes of data into pools, he said.
Both lifesciences and healthcare saw significant shift towards Big Data, Advanced Analytics, on demand compute capabilities and cloud, to drive a variety of use cases to engage stakeholders like patients, caregivers, Health Care Professionals (HCP) and others. The motive behind using cloud to store large amounts of data and analytics is to get care right, the first time. RWE (Real World Evidence) gained prominence with more and more lifesciences companies investing in generating evidence and using technology to better collaborate on research and outcomes, noted Jeff Heenan-Jalil.
The sectors have showed an increased interest in the use of robotics and automation. Although it is still at infancy, robotics and automation are being keenly explored for infrastructure maintenance and enterprise application support. There are several pilot projects underway to leverage this technology in customer engagement, case processing, and complaints management type processes. This area is sure to get an uptick in the next couple years, he said.
With the advent of cloud, big data and digital – there is a huge focus on data privacy and security. The sector is investing significantly in creating secured networks through cyber security solutions, data at rest and motion, privacy protection, encryption and identity & access management while keeping all regulatory & privacy aspects into consideration.
“We believe that Connected Health in 2017 will not be just about technologies. It will be about connecting people and information within a system – the healthcare system. Technology is vital and exciting – but it is just one part of a picture that includes patient care pathways, business and revenue models, industry collaboration, data analytics and more,” stated Jeff Heenan-Jalil.
Therefore a key change in 2017 will stem from the need to manage and deliver care in the most effective and efficient way. This will drive the need for better patient health-status identification to telehealth, IoT, health-reminder apps. The healthcare ecosystem will change the way they deliver in the care continuum, to the most efficient way, so as to ensure quality care at lower costs.