The impact of the COVID-19 crisis, combined with a challenging economic environment and accelerating adoption of technology and digitization, has radically transformed the healthcare industry on both the patient and practitioner sides.
According to different studies, the development of telehealth could represent a potential market of up to495 billion euros worldwide. The contribution of digital technology to the health and care sectors is well established, and the major role of new technologies in accelerating decision-making and management of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is clear proof of this.
2023 will be the year of consolidation for the digital health market. If you are interested in how telehealth will transform medical practices, this article explores the trends that will shape this market in 2023.
2022: telehealth development continues
In 2021, the health crisis has pushed the healthcare sector to innovate and adapt. The innovation impulse in digital health was already underway, but in 2021, e-health investments saw an unprecedented increase, both on the public sector investment side, but also on the fundraising side of digital health companies.
During 2022, the digital healthcare market consolidated and was always in the spotlight. In 2023, the industry will face new challenges. Patients want better access to care and more effective treatment. Healthcare professionals are looking to improve their working conditions while maintaining a balance between their personal and professional lives.
Telehealth trends in 2023
1/ Telehealth will remain and expand
Telehealth has experienced a major boom during the Covid-19 health crisis.
In 2023, it is highly likely that the telehealth services developed during the pandemic will be extended to many other specialties and care paths, such as mental health, monitoring of chronic diseases or monitoring of patients recovering from surgery or serious illness.
Telehealth has the potential to improve access to health care, but it will not replace face-to-face medical visits. Many patients still believe that face-to-face interaction with healthcare professionals is necessary. In 2023, we can expect to seethe development of hybrid care between face-to-face and remote health thanks to better coordination of care paths.
2/ Artificial Intelligence to improve health and patient experience
The use of AI or artificial intelligence is not new in the world of healthcare. But the development of this type of technology in healthcare has accelerated significantly in recent years and will continue to do so in 2023.
AI and Machine Learning are used in this field as solutions to collect, analyze and exploit data in order to automate certain recurring tasks so that doctors can concentrate on other tasks with higher added value. These technologies will reach maturity in the digital health sector by 2030.
The uses can be very diverse, such as triage and orientation of patients, acceleration of drug development, diagnostic assistance through virtual assistants, computer-assisted surgery or epidemiological prevention. These numerous uses can be found throughout the entire healthcare pathway.
3/ IoT to improve patient care
The IoT, or Internet of Things, allows a variety of medical devices to be connected to the Internet. Thanks to these connected objects, patients can become more and more involved in their health. They can use or wear these devices to check their body temperature, blood pressure or heart rate, and transmit them to a doctor who will be able to remotely monitor the patient’s health status.
This type of device can help patients with chronic diseases better manage their health and contribute to better care. With the data transmitted, healthcare professionals can, for example, give advice to the patient or better prepare for an emergency management.
According to astudy, the global market for connected medical devices is expected to reach USD 94.2 billion by 2026.
4/ Interoperability of healthcare solutions and systems will move into high gear
The use of digital healthcare solutions implies an increasing number of software applications used by healthcare professionals, which means that training time is needed to master the various tools and that practices are becoming more complex. To take advantage of all the benefits of telehealth, accelerating interoperability between different business software and digital solutions will be a major challenge in 2023.
In the same way, the use of all these solutions, including the one mentioned above, implies being able to access patients’ health data quickly and securely throughout their journey, whether it be with doctors, hospitals or medico-social actors. It will therefore also be essential to accelerate the interoperability of solutions with healthcare systems.
5/ Focus on health data security
Digital healthcare is generally well received by patients, but beyond the efficiency and quality of care, confidentiality and security are among the main concerns of patients with regard to digital health solutions, and they are in favor of strengthening the security and confidentiality of this data.
The development of telehealth is also increasing the risk of exposure of health data with the increase in remote exchanges and the hosting of patient data in the cloud.
To address cybersecurity risks, telehealth solutions will not only have to meet regulatory requirements to ensure a high level of protection, but also implement and enforce best practices.
This will involve, among other things, hosting health data with a health data compliance certification (like HDS in France or HIPAA in the US) and more robust authentication processes.
Develop and improve your telehealth project in 2023 with Apizee
As we have seen, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on the global healthcare system, the pace of its digitization and the emergence of these trends to follow in 2023. The need to meet patient expectations, ensure quality of care and optimize care pathway coordination will drive the adoption of new solutions by healthcare professionals, but also impose new challenges such as security and interoperability.
At Apizee, we have worked from the beginning on the APIsation of our solutions to be able to interface vide remote health with other software solutions. This is even part of our DNA. APIs also allow us to connect with different healthcare systems. Finally, we are constantly working on the security of our solutions, and we have the necessary prerequisites to ensure the security of patients’ health data. If you have an telehealth project and would like to know more about how to integrate video transmission or remote health into your project, feel free to contact us to discuss it further.
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