2022 Informed: Five HealthTech predictions

With the Covid 19 pandemic still lurking as 2021 comes to a close, medical services are expected to see even more demand in 2022. We spoke to Healthtech experts who are expecting increased bandwidth, tighter security, and more complex technology to support the digitalisation of such services.

1: More bandwidth for medical practitioners

“While Telehealth offers tremendous benefits, accessibility for patients in rural areas is yet to be realised. Today there are different levels of medical services for certain populations, some are in rural locations (with limited access to world class experts), and some cannot afford the most advanced services. The emergence of affordable and accessible connectivity services provides the ability to close many of these gaps. Telehealth powered by new IoT capabilities and particularly 5G, will transform the healthcare landscape. Additional bandwidth, better coverage, and overall lower infrastructure costs with different forms of wireless technology enables communities in remote areas access to the best medical practitioners.”

Nir Shalom, CEO at floLIVE

2: New data sovereignty concerns for digital

“The acceleration of digital transformation across all spheres, prompted by the pandemic, has nudged data sovereignty back into the forefront of businesses’ minds. According to McKinsey, the pandemic sped up the adoption of digital technologies by several years, for enterprises and public bodies alike, from educational institutions to healthcare. Keeping regional control of the data generated by these digital technologies will be a critical priority for organisations. As digital transformation matures, IT leaders will be tasked with ensuring data is stored and protected compliantly. For EU-based companies, this means keeping data within the union’s boundaries.

In 2022, we will see organisations undergoing a storage revolution to meet data protection demands. For example, in the UK, the NHS must store medical records for one hundred years. With medical information undergoing a major shift to online locations (bolstered by the government’s recent commitment of £5.9bn towards digital technology in the NHS, there will be dramatic investment in high capacity, low-latency storage solutions. Medical data is critical and often large meaning that in the coming year, healthcare institutions will be forced to invest in reliable storage architectures or risk compromising data protection standards.”

Davide Villa, Director Business Development EMEAI

3: Cybersecurity needs to improve to take on increased demand for Telemedicine

“Telemedicine will continue evolving. This means more applications for doctor consultations and patient health monitoring will appear, and cybercriminals will have the opportunity to discover security holes in a whole slew of new applications created by developers who have never made this kind of products before. What is more, malicious counterfeits of telehealth apps will most likely appear in app stores: fake apps that will imitate the real thing and promise to deliver the same functionality.”

“Demand for fake digital medical documents will increase, as will supply. The more privileges are given to those with a COVID passport, the more people will be interested in buying one instead of getting vaccinated or tested.”

“The sensitivity of the medical data found in leaks will grow. The data contained in medical records is, by itself, highly sensitive. However, digitisation possibilities for medical equipment are growing, and providers are more frequently using wearable devices or even sensors implanted in the human body to collect even more sensitive data that is not necessarily of a medical nature. These devices may, for example, provide details of the person’s movements.”

“The medical theme will forever be a popular one for use as bait in cybercrime schemes. Since the beginning of the pandemic, an increasing number of medical services have moved online either partly or in full, so patients now watch for notifications about test results and messages from doctors. Therefore, a letter, spoofed as an important “medical” notification can be just as successful in catching victims off their guard as fake messages from banks.”

“The growth in the number of data leaks and ransomware attacks on medical organisations makes clear, among other things, a lack of information security awareness in healthcare employees. If the year 2022 does not see a wide-scale training process – and none is expected at the moment – we will witness a continued increase in the type of attacks in question.”

Maria Namestnikova, security expert at Kaspersky

4: Interoperability will see a new lease of life

“The growing power of the patient is inevitably going to inform new models of care. With patients increasingly invested in their own patient experience, the NHS will need to find more effective ways to manage and share data from clinician to clinician, hospital to hospital or GP referral to hospital. An inconsistent approach to digital data management is already slowing a system built on siloed infrastructure. Advances in digital triage will be disconnected and insufficient without support from the NHS.”

“Over the course of the next 12 months, we’ll see healthcare organisations place a renewed emphasis on interoperable and secure data platforms. With this, patients will benefit from a more joined-up care service. It will ensure that the patient only has to explain their symptoms and provide a history once to ensure that the sickest patients are routed to care, at speed.”

“More importantly, with access to real-time data at the point of care, we can close more of the information gaps that slow down or trip up doctors, nurses and administrative staff working in an incredibly pressurised, urgent care environment.”

Rex Cooper, CTO, eConsult

5: Automation and AI will help ease demand for hospitals

“The NHS will continue to face unprecedented levels of demand. This will outstrip capacity. With record-length waiting lists for surgery set to grow, no space to offload A&E patients, and wards full to the brim, our already stretched services are going to become more back-logged.”

“But with the flu season predicted to be worse this year due to reduced social contact, the good news is that we can expect to see technology utilised to create digital services for patients that improve patient outcomes and drive efficiency through the system.”

“This will happen in two ways. The first is automation. Automation tools will transform the patient experience by rapidly routing them to the right clinician. By automating processes at the clinical level, it’s not only possible to route uncomplicated care needs through to self-help tools or the pharmacy, but also to quickly spot potentially life-threatening conditions, shortening the path between diagnosis and treatment, and freeing up beds for those who need them.

“Secondly, next year I expect to see technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – which are designed to empower clinicians to make informed decisions at speed – utilised more widely across the healthcare system. Whilst there’s still room for growth in this area, it’s likely that this will be prioritised into the new year to support the NHS in giving the proper care, at the right time to improve the overall patient experience.”

Mark Harmon, A&E Doctor and Chief Strategy Brand Officer, eConsult