State of Digital Health

The stone is rolling – uphill

In 2020 the world saw a so called “black swan event” that by definition was not foreseen and predicted by anyone. What was a dramatic event brought tremendous change to the world we live in: change that led many industries – healthcare among them – to steer in the direction of digitalization with an extreme course correction. This trend of accelerated digitalization is now heading towards its peak and it is safe to say that the healthcare industry is going to evolve more within the next decade than it did in the past 20 years or more.

Let us use one striking example for the accelerated pace of advancing digitalization: while sitting in an airplane with flight mode turned on, your iPhone sends a signal to your watch to inform you that the headphones you are using right now are too loud for your ear-health. Your phone made this decision – offline – based on collected audio volume data from the past days. And all this did not require you to install any new app of whatever – features like this just come along quietly with some software updates of your phone. 10 years ago this alone would have sounded like science-fiction.

There is a lot going on right now in digital health. And we are keen on talking about the current state of the advancement of digitalization with some more examples. Read more by going to the Aescuvest Blog please.

Telehealth is here

Obviously, the total amount of video consultations by healthcare practitioners over the last 24 months increased drastically. Finally, German regulations are also in place for telehealth. At the time of writing every doctor with direct patient contact is allowed to consult 20% of his patients remotely via video. Costs for telehealth services are now reimbursed by insurance companies as well. You can try this by yourself with service provider like the TeleClinic in Germany where booking and attending video consultations with doctors of all fields is easy and convenient. Telehealth is here to stay.

Hot Topic: Digital Health

At the CES 2022 in Las Vegas you can discover new innovative technologies – this time there are more Digital Health appearances than ever! Especially interesting is the experience of building your own digital twin of your body. Dassault Systèmes allows visitors to create a copy of themselves in the digital world to predict how medication could impact your bodies health or what results a surgery could potentially bring.

Big Pharma and digital supply chains

COVID brought all weaknesses in supply chain management to the surface – after this every industry increased its efforts in establishing quick and versatile digital supply chains. The pharma industry in particular needs to be able to react quick to challenges in the supply chain since critical medications can’t be missed due to poor supply chain management. A study of the Leibnitz Informationszentrum Wirtschaft revealed that in 2020 77% of all major pharma companies invested in digitalization of supply chain management. They are hoping to be able to predict possible risks and/or solve problems in the supply chain much quicker in future with better communications and data sharing systems.

Digital Health Applications (DiGA) are taking off

During the past months Germany really started to adapt their new approach of digitalizing the healthcare industry in the form of Digital Health Applications (DiGA). One healthcare insurance company recently stated that almost 2000 patients requested to get a digital health application reimbursed in 2021. Patients are using DiGA to fight tinnitus, to support their efforts of getting rid of joint problems, lose weight or weaken migraine.

The list of accepted DiGA is getting longer and longer. Experts say that the journey is still young and we are going to see a lot more adoption over the course of the years to come. The German Federal Ministry of Health announced that starting in April 2023 digital health applications should have e direct data feed into the electronic patient record that is already rolling out right now.

Identify “sustainable” healthcare trends!

With a lot going on in digital health right now, it is easy to be overwhelmed. We recommend keeping a close eye on the key trends that initiated due to COVID in 2020, survived until now and stay with us during the year ahead. What- and whoever survives 2022 will most likely succeed in the decade to come! Telehealth is most likely going to be one of these trends. Digital Health Applications another one. And there are more trends that we are usually all covering in our weekly blogposts.

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