Consumerization of Health & Life - Fiction or Reality?

We have experienced many disruptions of established industries in the recent past, starting with photography, where Kodak went from 170,000 employees to being bankrupt within three years, the movie rental industry where the video stores like Blockbuster entirely vanished as we are having the films on our finngertips from our home at all times for example with Netflix, or transportation and accommodation where the two largest companies, Uber and AirBnB, don’t own any assets.

Will it be healthcare next where the largest provider does not own any hospitals or practices, does not employ any clinical staff? It is clear that the way we all worked 5 years ago is drastically different from how we work today and we will need to further adapt in the future. 95% of jobs are supposed to not exist the same way in 2020 as they exist today. This is due to the exponentially growing innovation we are experiencing every day. Though, what does this mean for healthcare, or should I better say health and life? There are some innovations and dynamics that will have a substantial impact on the healthcare industry as we know it today.

1. Virtual Reality

2. Augmented Reality

3. Mixed Reality

4. Artificial Intelligence

5. Consumerization of health & life

We all know Virtual Reality and might have tried a game using an Oculus Rift or enjoyed a virtual flight over the Grand Canyon with our Smartphone plugged into a cardboard frame. It has actually been used for two decades in a healthcare setting to treat post-traumatic stress disorder patients as well as for pain management of burn patients to distract them from the pain during their treatments. Phobias have also been treated effectively by using this technology already over a decade.

Now, first pilots are launched to utilize virtual reality in the recovery of stroke and Parkinson’s disease patients, where one can walk through the forest, along the shore or even go on a sailing boat. This clearly requires multiple body areas to work in harmony and is shortening the healing process, based upon the first results that were obtained. Furthermore, the positive impact on the patient, who does not only see the treadmill and a view on the room’s wall or out the window or plays on a gaming console to be dis- tracted. There are many more areas where the use of virtual reality can have a profound impact from better connecting with the loved ones even including holoportation, in the training and medical education where students are enabled to take part in a surgery and obtain best-practices almost ‘first-hand', or to prepare and familiarize people that are carrying out critical live saving tasks and need to function in the case of an emergency.

Augmented Reality is enhancing our real life experience with digital content, which can particularly be beneficial during surgeries where additional critical information are presented to the surgeon in a non-disruptive manner while executing the procedure. MindMaze took this concept even further and is projecting an avatar into the virtual reality for post-stroke and Parkinson’s disease patients to imitate the movements and thus positively impacts the recovery by aiding the correct execution of the specific movement patterns. Getting the right guidance or feedback can not only help patients in their healing but also in the onboarding of new staff members to gain full prociency of the new role more quickly.

Now imagine that digital content is injected seamlessly into our normal life and even tricking our brain into believing it is part of reality. This sounds more like science fiction for most of us, but actually a company called MagicLeap is exactly planning to do that. They digitized the visual signal that our eyes use to process the things we see and thus enable the possibility of having virtual content seamlessly integrated into our life experience. This Mixed Reality is clearly still some time out before it will be mainstream adopted. However, the possibilities particularly for the health care & life space are enormous.

But what does all the data that is captured or presented to us in whichever shape or form help, if it is not enhanced with intelligence? Thankfully, besides the exponential increase in collected information that is following Moore’s Law, we also see the same increase in processing power and storage. This is enabling us to catch up on utilizing the captured data appropriately and that in a timely manner. All of us have toyed around with the digital assistants surrounding us, be it Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Echo or OK Google, to name a few.

However, I doubt that any of you is using those helpers excessively. The potential though with a further maturing of Artificial Intelligence is immense. Lighthouse projects such as Google’s Deepmind Health Project, IBM’s Watson, or iCarbonX are paving the path of what the future of AI in healthcare could be and Babylon in the UK has already launched an app for basic medical consultation that is utilizing AI. So, the question is whether doctors will remain the way we know it today? The answer is from my point of view very clear, as a machine is a better data collector than a human being. Consequently, the role of a medical practitioner will evolve further and AI will take over a large portion of the tasks they carry out today. Virtual clinics are on the rise as experiences gained will instantaneously be available to all other patients and do not reside with the one healthcare specialist that gained them.

Despite the fear of a negative impact or control of AI, the right governance has to be put in place as the foundation. This is inevitable and maybe one of the more critical items to be thought through properly. Lastly, Genomics is still in the early stages, though prices are dropping and usage is increasing. This will lead in due time to a data foundation that enriched with AI will identify patterns and connections we don’t know of yet and in turn will enable the creation of new treatment plans. Where does it all come together? Each of us is having more technology in our lives. The way we are living today is completely different from how we lived 10 years ago. If I ask people what will happen in ten years’ time, it feels like it is so far away, but in hindsight 10 years feel like a very short period of time for the same group of people. The entire dynamic of consumer focused services has already started in the health space and it will not take too long till a complete Consumerization of Health & Life will be our daily reality. We are already carrying around our fitness trackers and smart watches that are capturing information, using applications to obtain ‘right-now & right- here’ services. This will be no different when it comes to health & life.

Be it our clothes, patches, or implants that will constantly monitor our well-being, personalized health coaches will become a natural part of our life moving forward. This does not mean that it has to be a human being we are interacting with. More and more care is already provided outside the four wall of a health facility. Thus, like with the virtual clinics, we will receive recommendations and guidance for our daily activities due to the richness of information available about our current state of health. In turn every citizen will benefit from the findings and what treatments resulted in a higher improvement. To me all of this sounds on the one hand a bit scary, but on the on the other hand, I can’t wait for it to become a reality. The future of a consumer focused health & life experience has already begun. 

Article originally published in Hospital - Issue March/April - 20017

Link to article: http://www.cerner.com/uploadedFiles/consumerization-health-life.pdf

Link to newsroom: http://www.cerner.com/newsroom.aspx?id=17179883370&blogid=2147483710&langType=14337