One thing that I was pleasantly surprised with at HLTH was just how many different countries were represented at the venue. Having operated in the US healthcare system only, I wasn’t aware of the level of interest and desire to enter the US market by solution developers around the world. Several countries like Korea, Israel, UK, Australia, Canada, and other European countries had their own dedicated booths that showcased a variety of cutting edge innovations.

It’s no secret that each country is fighting its own unique battle in the frontiers of healthcare innovation and delivery. The perception, business model, government involvement, and even culture around healthcare in each country is so vastly different that I didn’t expect there to be this level of shared interest and alignment. 

The innovators I met at HLTH were most interested in accessing the pathway to deliver the solutions they developed in their respective countries to the US healthcare providers. Some were more advanced and proven while others were somewhat exploratory, but to say that they are brilliant would be an understatement.  

Another trend I noticed in the globalization was the level of government involvement in the solution developer market. Several countries like Finland, UK, Singapore, and Korea had government projects or initiatives to digitize the healthcare data for the entire population. While creating this database doesn’t automatically enable its utilization due to privacy laws and regulations, it’s also a significant lift that could soften the barriers to using this data for developing solutions or conducting large scale research. Next steps to making this data readily usable will require further processing but this will be for a different time. 

AI was expectedly the alpha and omega of all discussions and solutions showcased at the conference. There were several live sessions with keynote speakers from the industry who spoke to the development and use of AI within the context of healthcare. For those who are interested in the most recent discussions, I suggest you check out CHAI (Coalition of Health AI). You can visit their website using this link. 

Although AI was in the center of the spotlights, values generated by the innovators covered a much wider spectrum. 

Empowerment

AI solutions were widely applied for early diagnosis of various diseases as well as their management. There seemed to be a general trend of automating diagnostic pathways leveraging smartphone features, applications and wearable devices. While the primary goal for many of these solutions seemed to focus on reducing the burden of healthcare providers, it hinted towards another fortunate byproduct: patient empowerment. With easier diagnostics and monitoring, the patients can take more ownership of how they manage their conditions, and to some degree, how they choose to ‘consume’ the healthcare services available for them.

Decompression

“Stressful” isn’t a word strong enough to describe the workload and pressure healthcare providers face. Physicians often have to work several hours after their working hours for charting, guidelines and protocols are constantly changing, and layers of administrative work open up abundant opportunities of human error.

Not surprisingly, there were several solutions that focused on lending aid for those burnt out healthcare professionals. Ambient listening technology to assist with charting, generative AI solutions that provide tailored instructions following organizational protocols, and automation solutions to complete repetitive administrative tasks are some of the promising solutions aimed to assist with the overwhelming workload. There may be some barriers unrelated to the technology itself to operationalize these and reap the benefits but judging by how quickly the solutions are evolving to be more accurate and efficient, it’s hard to imagine that those days are far away. 

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Solutions that assisted with facilitating the various activities related to patient care were also abundantly observed. AI may not be as core of a component for these solutions but the value generated are nonetheless valuable. From acquiring prior-auth to conducting perioperative tests, caring for a patient requires a team effort, and a well functioning one too. There were several solutions that leveraged a platform-like strategy where the product would weave the modular components in the care journey into a singular process. 

Like all other industries, the quantity of healthcare data is increasing exponentially. With smartphones doubling as diagnostic devices and wearable gadgets enabling active collection of various patient vitals as well as behavioral patterns, the pile will only continue to grow as digitized tracking of the care journey is normalized. This trend is already serving patients, healthcare providers, insurers and adjacent service providers in obvious ways. One twist may be that a single solution now holds the potential to benefit multiple entities in the industry. For instance, an AI powered diagnostic solution could be used by patients to understand their symptoms and make a more planned ‘consumption’ of healthcare services while healthcare providers use this data to proactively intervene before the condition worsens. In essence, today’s advances in technology is now actively connecting the fragmented pieces that make a patient’s journey in the system. 

One notable movement that is serving as the adhesive to this trend is the rise of platform-like services. There are a few players already pioneering this field: academic medical centers, EHR companies, and independent corporations of varying sizes and focal points that are positioning themselves to be the one-stop shop for all solid lines. 

There were several shades to this theme as companies had their own areas of focus. A recurring underlying topic revolved around cost reduction through curation and facilitation of various administrative processes like prior-authorization or perioperative admissions and screening coordination. Many of the companies were also able to report success stories backed by concrete numbers. 

Another shade focused on capitalizing on the healthcare data collected and made usable by healthcare providers. As mentioned at the top, some of these efforts are being facilitated on a country level where the entire population’s clinical records are digitized and centralized by the government. In the US, the key players in the market are EHR providers and academic medical centers who have direct access to the data. The benefactors of these efforts include everyone that stands somewhere on the solution development and research spectrum. When, and not if, these platform services mature, a foundation will be established to not only connect the dots but also grow the picture to incorporate multiple layers of insights that will accelerate innovation.