Healthcare and Technology — A potent combination

Healthcare — Poised for a revolution

Summary — I discuss the state of global health today with specific deep dives into India as an example country. I also touch upon the disruption that technology can have in this sector. Finally, I put forward some key factors of a successful healthcare technology solution / product.

Technology, today, is driving changes in Healthcare like never before. Technology for healthcare, in some form or the other, has always been available over the last few decades but over the last few years, a major evolution has occurred that is changing the rules of the game. In fact, a whole new industry sector called Healthtech is thriving on the basis of the above evolution. The future is extremely bright for this sector.

So why now? What is so different today then, say 5–10 years ago?

To understand this, first, let’s take a step back and grok the health issues currently.

Look at the following chart (below) reproduced from a WHO report. It clearly shows how life expectancy is rising globally and that the life expectancy and HALE (Healthy Life Expectancy) is different depending on whether you are male or female and of course your age.

Now, take a look at another chart from the WHO (below) from the same report. We can see that the cause of death differs depending on the income group you are in. Lower income groups are more susceptible to communicable diseases, injuries and maternal conditions. As you go to higher income groups, the incidence of NCD’s (Non Communicable Diseases) increases.

Finally, one more instructive chart from the report (below). This shows us clearly the skew of the type diseases against national income. Low income groups suffer more deaths due to communicable diseases and injuries / accidents. High income groups suffer more deaths due to non communicable diseases.

(BTW — This report is chock full of interesting data — do go and read it.)

A deeper analysis of that report yields the following conclusions:

• Globally, life expectancy has been rising like never before. People are living longer and thus are more susceptible to certain diseases than were in earlier times
• Some countries are much more complex to manage than others since they have larger populations and the income groups are spread across the band from low to high. These countries thus exhibit almost the whole spectrum of diseases shown in the charts
• Diseases affect countries / groups in many detrimental ways. Costs include loss of income, productivity and reduction in the quality of life. A mortality in a family is of course a great emotional burden but in lot of cases can also lead to huge financial burdens for survivors
• Extrapolating the numbers in the charts over a whole nation leads us to conclude that the health costs (not just financial) are on mammoth scales already and would only increase going forward

This is quite sobering and begs the question — what can we do about it?

Of course, neither this article nor the author is proposing a magic remedy. But, we can certainly use the data above to plan and create solutions that start working for us. Depending on the income group and the disease category, there are different remedies to consider. A few key ones are:

• Governmental driven outreach / public policy / NGO driven: A short indicative list is a) Push public and personal hygiene to the top of the community agenda b) Vaccinate! Vaccinate! Vaccinate!, c) Sensitize communities to risk factors and provide easy to apply remedies, again tailored for their lifestyle and income group. These are continuous processes and need to go on for years (decades, even) before they become ingrained in the collective psyche.
• Technology driven initiatives: This is where private players can play a major role. Leverage the latest technologies (hardware and software) to build innovative solutions and products that are a) easily available b) low cost and c) evolutionary in nature.

Readers might see some cognitive dissonance in the two statements above. Isn’t technology relevant in government outreach et al? It is, and I am aware of the fact. But, that bucket is primarily driven by public health policies and those policy implementations in turn leverage technology for their goals. On the flip-side, in the technology driven initiatives bucket, my contention is that technological innovation itself acts a driver for novel healthcare solutions and products. Public health initiatives is a complex area by itself and I am not focusing on it in this article. The remainder of the article will talk about healthteach and its possibilities.

Consider where the technology sector is today and how it can help us in this fight. Take a look at the figure below:

• Seamless and always available connectivity. This allows proliferation of both web and mobile based applications and devices that can rely on the network effect. Healthcare professional and patient connects are faster, easier and can be leveraged remotely
• Cheap but powerful smart phones capable of running rich applications and packing an array of useful sensors. These devices and their rich application development support environment allow developers to build engaging and useful apps rapidly
• The cost of design, development and production of bespoke hardware has gone down significantly. At the same time, the support system to enable this industry has grown enormously. This allows creation of new or novel medical devices faster and more easily

Also, as technology evolves and gets better, a compounding effect would pay extremely rich dividends. Older technology results would provide data and evidence, in turn driving exponential benefits which would help in realizing newer technologies.

All this is good and fine. Wouldn’t it be much more useful to talk about how Healthtech can help specifically? I agree.

To understand where to invest and reap benefits not just from a business perspective but from the angle of community health, we need to look at specific data so that we know we are tackling the right health issues. Let us focus on India as a country. It shows a unique spectrum of issues. Look at data for India from IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation).

Another one:

The above graphs tell us clearly call out top causes of death and disability. Here it is important to note that disability means anything that significantly impacts quality of life at home, leisure or work.

While India has been marching ahead in terms of combating communicable diseases, 3 out of top 5 causes of premature death are due to communicable, maternal and neonatal diseases. For disability, out of top 5, 4 are due to NCD’s and at least 2 (and one more, partly) are related to musculoskeletal disorders.

Take a look at the risk factors driving death and disability:

Out of the top 5, 3 risk factors are behavioral (lifestyle choices or compulsions).

Any successful product or solution must take all the above data in account. It must target the health problems sensitized with the risk factors.

Key characteristics of a successful healthtech solution:

Considering, the data above (both health patterns + technology evolution), the following are the most important factors of any healthtech solution that aims to be successful. (While based off data specific to India, the rules are generic enough to apply elsewhere):

1. Must clearly identify the disease niche or range of related conditions it wants to target. Depending on the condition the solution could be preventive or curative or, in some cases, both
2. Be sensitive to patient income group — this means it’s cost to patient must be appropriate for the level of treatment it provides to that income group. Cheaper technology constructs positively impact this factor
3. Correlate risk factors with the condition and keep mitigation of related risk factors as part of the solution. With latest software capabilities, such complex correlations and their analysis become now not only possible but much easier
4. Access to these solutions must be easy for the patient to reach to — it must be as local to them as possible. Local access also positively impacts timeliness of healthcare delivery. Basing solutions or products on existing and ubiquitous technology products allows this to happen
5. Lastly, of course, the quality of the healthcare advise / treatment must be of a high level. Here is where technology can play a central role in bringing out high quality solutions and products

Thank you for reading this article! I welcome any comments or queries you may have. I am an independent technology consultant in the area of digital transformation and its related fields. I help organizations navigate their journey towards leveraging technologies like Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Mobile Applications and others for their business. Most recently I’ve helped bootstrap, design and prototype a biofeedback platform and am helping organizations in the IoT sector. If you or your organization are looking for help in digital transformations, drop me a message!