A Rising Force: Your Health Powered by Hybrid Care

Pace Ventures

Published in

Pace Ventures

5 min readSep 28, 2022

Summary

Digital health is everywhere, and the digitization of most healthcare systems is indisputably essential. However, questions remain to what extent physician-patient interactions should be digital.
We have analyzed use cases where a hybrid approach of digital and live interactions may yield the most favorable results across patient journeys.
Rethinking practice and rehabilitation centers will be a powerful way to translate hybrid best practices into healthcare delivery.

1. How virtual should healthcare be?

Digital health is a ubiquitous and rising umbrella term. Revenue in the global digital health market is projected to reach $145.80bn in 2022, growing at a CAGR of 11.94% and a projected market volume of $256.30bn in 2027 (1).

We see it spanning three domains:

1) digitization tools to improve and supercharge current IoT processes such as Avelios Medical, Canvas Medical or doctorly (e.g. interconnected EHR systems and adjacent tools),

2) digital and self-tracking health apps (nutrition, fitness, medication adherence), and

3) digitally-enabled consultations and therapy communication tools (bringing patients and physicians together virtually).

All these segments seek to optimize our health and the healthcare system. But when we focus on the last element, the digital mode of care, it is still unproven which use cases benefit the most from virtual care. How digital should healthcare be, and when is the virtual world better suited for physician-patient interactions than live in-person?

2. Introducing the hybrid care model

We have explored various use cases that may respond differently to the convergence of virtual and in-person care.

Use case specific hybrid care: Research shows that different conditions need different settings. For example, a study focusing on optimizing care for asthma among pediatric patients reported that in-person care was a better setting to building a relationship with the child‘s physician than in a virtual environment (6).

Contrastingly, renowned US-based Mayo Clinic has introduced a “Hybrid Care Hotel” for patients following small and low-risk surgical procedures, which yielded positive results and showed that a hybrid care model is conducive to a strong recovery for patients (figure below).

The care hotel is a separate facility from the hospital and preserves hospital capacity whilst contributing to rapid recovery with digitally-powered tools. Upon check-in, patients are given a tech set, including biometric devices for vital sign monitoring and custom-configured tablets with video visit capabilities (2).

Furthermore, our research shows that cases of rehabilitation and autonomy-centered care have been shown to benefit most from a hybrid mixture of physical and digital treatment. Or, as Roland Berger puts it, “phygital care” (3). The following cases may benefit most from the blended approach:

Post-surgery cases and rehabilitation — enabling a seamless blend between onsite and remote recovery;
Mental health — psychological therapy;
Chronic care check-ins — also valuable for the inclusion of family members in the process;
Recurring tasks — prescription renewal or an initial meeting with a doctor;
Consultations — interesting for medical fields reliant on visual diagnosis/assessments, e.g. dermatology.

An important aspect is the ability of virtual care to be more easily integrated into everyday patient lives. Controlling health daily from the comfort of their homes is supercharged by the increasing development of tools such as wearables and sensors. Virtual care is thus moreover also a time-effective asset by saving the way to a doctor’s office and wait times in the practice. The key is using digital assets while maintaining the much-needed humanistic presence in the physical space to supercharge the patient journey.

3. Rethinking healthcare spaces

A few companies are tackling this fine line between digital supercharge and live humanistic care. For example, startups Avi Medical, Eterno Health or Elona Health are rethinking healthcare spaces and patient journeys more holistically by doubling down on aesthetic and efficiently managed practices to deliver end-to-end healthcare supported by tech with a human medical experience at its center.

Other than standard practices, they take the admin weight off a physician’s shoulders and let them focus on what they can do best: treating patients. Additionally, we see a rise in software for specific medical fields that are making the life of clinicians easier through seamless tech (patient overview, billing, etc.) while supporting diagnostics and treatment. In mental health and psychotherapy, these include Elona Health (above) and thymia.

…and how do doctors feel about this?

According to a Swedish 2020 study, physicians working with digital consultations perceive a high grade of autonomy and reasonable to low demands on their time allocation (4). However, the physicians reported concerns about maintaining their medical skills and abilities, and from conversations with physicians and healthcare experts in our network, we observed binary outcomes, with primary care physicians much more receptive to leveraging digital tools than secondary care physicians.

Our assumption is that in continental Europe, physicians may view digital tech (especially in diagnostics/treatment support) almost as a threat to their medical credence, while LATAM markets such as Brazil, proves to be more open about a tech-driven healthcare system. We stay tuned for any research on how an emphasis on virtual care will impact physicians’ occupational health and job satisfaction.

4. Personalized hybrid patient journeys

Until then, we are excited to see hybrid care developments that best suit patient needs. Depending on the condition, the virtual mode can act as a funnel to pre-onboard patients in their patient journey and be used incredibly effectively as a prevention tool.

As a next step, in-person care can be value-adding to ensure patients adhere to therapies and feel they receive the appropriate level of care. Nevertheless, special consideration is needed for the less digitally-savvy population, who may feel overwhelmed by technology.

Personalizing patient journeys is gaining importance, and we look forward to more entrepreneurs thinking about delivering the best healthcare to the right person.