We have witnessed in the past couple of years how badly the COVID-19 hit the market and was declared a global pandemic. This situation forced everyone to go beyond and try out some innovative ways so that businesses can run and it defined the setbacks and lacks in the healthcare industry.
Considering this challenge, now the healthcare industry is all set to put more investments by aiming to increase the workforce and investment in digital healthcare technologies in the next 4-5 years. In the world of digitalization where we are aiming to make our lives better and more efficient. Now is the time to highlight some of the best digital foundations that can change the system of healthcare and the way we used to see it earlier and for that, we curated 5 best healthcare tech trends that we need to watch out for in 2022:
1. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
You must have heard about IoT so far but IoMT is slightly different used for connecting the healthcare devices with the Internet along with the applications used within. In the past when pandemics made everything difficult for almost every sector, IoMT came into the mainstream that helped in monitoring not only the patients who were infected by COVID but also it helped in making follow-ups for post recovering patients on the count of massive scale.
The architecture of IoMT enabled certain crucial phases that include, patient’s live monitoring, screening, remote monitoring, and treatment using telehealth (the use of digital information and communication technologies, to remotely access healthcare services). Besides this, the future is bright for IoMT and currently, the market is at $50 Billion and is expected to go beyond $180 Billion in the next 5-6 years (at a CAGR of 30%). Thanks to the smart innovators and companies who have been working tirelessly to make it work smoothly with less or almost zero error.
2. Electronic Health Record (EHR)
This is generally used to maintain the records of a patient that including patient history, test results, any specific allergies, and so on. An electronic health record is being in such a way that besides keeping all the records in a digital form, it can also enable access to evidence-based tools by which their prescribed doctors can take actions appropriately. This has already started rolling out in the healthcare industry and the way people have responded to this and currently, the market size is reported at $37 billion and is expected to go to $50 Billion in the next 4 years.
Some of the top giants in this industry are Epic (market share: 34%), Cerner (market share: 23%), MEDITECH (market share: 14.6%), etc. Besides this, an electronic health record is capable of reducing the operation cost and will proportionally boost enhancement in client’s (patient) active participation. The way IoMT is evolving will soon become the basic need of each individual, increase health awareness among people, and prevent any accidental incidents.
3. Smart Wearable Devices
In the past couple of years, we have witnessed how badly people got affected by the outburst of COVID-19. Since then, when businesses were forced to adopt handling their work remotely, people became more health-conscious and that led to the instant whoop of the smart healthcare wearable devices to keep themselves active to monitor regularly. Besides this, there has been a consistent change in technology so that the wearable devices can collect all the useful data and for keeping track of all the records (in real-time) to generate an evaluation. T
here are certain devices that can heart rate, monitor blood pressure, blood oxygen, GPS, movement, etc. and these top-notch feature allows the early detection of any serious medical problem. The future seems bright for smart wearable devices and is expected to go from USD $116 Billion to USD $265 Billion (2021-2026).
In the upcoming years, we are likely to see how wearable devices can provide physiological monitoring during clinical trials, (such as in the case of new drug development), and provide early detection of any anomalies.
4. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
It is often referred to as remote physiologic monitoring, is a method of capturing and analyzing health data via certain digital devices and technologies, and is very helpful especially when the patient is in no condition of doing any physical movement. Remote patient monitoring gained its popularity when the world was struggling with the COVID pandemic.
RPM facilitates patients by reducing their travel for regular check-ups and it can be used for treating both acute and chronic conditions. Besides wearables, there are some devices that can help in tracking patients’ health from time to time, those are, weight scales, pulse oximeters, blood glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, heart monitors, (and even specialized monitors for dementia and Parkinson’s). However, the market is likely to jump from USD $30 Billion to USD $101 Billion (2021-2028) at a CAGR of 19% worldwide.
5. Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual reality has been in trend for a while now and this is turn out to be a lifesaver by offering new life-saving techniques to provide assistance for treatment. Although this field is relatively new it has a great positive effect on patients along with the doctors. Currently, there is a handful of companies (Osso VR and Immersive Touch) that are offering to train doctors/surgeons to brush up their skills and practice new methods of treatments and another report suggested that virtual reality has enabled a massive growth of +200% in terms of performance rather than applying the traditional methods.
Thus, VR is capable enough to eliminate the margin of error and could be a great asset for learning in the healthcare domain. This was just one of the applications for VR, besides this, it can also be used for conducting conferences, treating patients in a newer approach by offering them VR-rich therapies, and so on.
However, the market is welcoming VR in a positive way and has been continuously rising resulting which it being likely to gain from (2020) USD $6 Billion to USD $21 Billion in the next 4 years (2025).
Conclusion
The healthcare tech sector is drastically booming at an enormous rate over the past few years and sooner it is going to be our new normal with more improved and reachable technologies. This is just the beginning of a purely evolving digital world; the list of best health tech trends isn’t finishing here.
In fact, there are other technologies/devices too like bio patch, telemedicine, digital prescriptions, digital therapeutics and so on that are helping in the health tech sector but we move with the trend on what’s going to dominate in technology and that’s why we bought you the list of 5 best health tech trends to watch out for. As we move forward, we’re likely to see some more fascinating methods in the field of health tech for sure.