Digital Salutem
21 December 2017

The State of The Healthcare Industry – Experts Insight

By João Bocas
healthcare industry

It’s relevant to understand the state of the healthcare industry. For this reason, Siemens Healthineers asked Harvard Business Analytics Services to survey healthcare professionals (decision makers, influencers and managers) to gain insight into key industry trends. The survey garnered 613 respondents of which 85% worked in healthcare, the remaining 15% comprised consultants with clients from the healthcare industry.

Of course this research started off with a short explanation of the challenges we face. As you might have read in some of my other blogs or heard somewhere else, the prevalence of chronic diseases increases, whilst simultaneously medical care is becoming more sophisticated.

 

The State of The Healthcare Industry: The Data

The costs for this type of healthcare are high and still rising. On the other hand we see an aging population and vast increases in the number of people  with cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.  This pushes the demand for regular primary care, therewith also increasing cost.

As we now almost all know, change is needed. This might explain why due to new business models and technologies 76% of the respondents sees disruption everywhere in healthcare. Moreover, 91% of the respondents feel that the new business models and technologies make for an immense opportunity in the healthcare industry.

What is contradicting in this is that even though almost all healthcare professionals believe change is needed for the benefit of the industry, they also state that healthcare is far lacking behind other industries in its capacity (73%) and ability (78%) to adapt. Moreover 43% believes their organisations will change slower than their competitors.

The State of The Healthcare Industry: The Insights

Mark van Houdenhoven, the CEO of the Sint Maartenkliniek in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, states, with this in mind, that healthcare does not have an innovation problem but an implementation problem.  An action bias as he calls it. I find this well worded. I believe, the conservative mind of healthcare is exactly why disruptive change is needed.

This is underpinned by the outcomes of the survey. 62% of the respondents states that the creation of a culture of innovation and risk is essential to improve healthcare, however only 22% sees this back in their own organisation. In addition to this we find that to make the new technologies operable in healthcare several barriers need to be overcome. Following the surveyed healthcare professionals these are lack of resources (39%), bureaucratic, old-school, hierarchical health service delivery models (38%) and a lack of effective change-management processes (31%).

However, nevertheless, most respondents do think change is coming. 54% believes that digital technologies will (very) significantly disrupt healthcare in the upcoming three years, 30% feels moderate about this. The key drivers for this change are seen as, better outcomes (57%), increasing patient engagement (44%), reducing costs (43%), enabling operational excellence and increasing workforce productivity (38%) and improving quantity and quality of patient data to provide the best possible patient care (37%).

state of healthcare industry

The State of The Healthcare Industry: The Disruption

The tools an capabilities which are expected to disrupt healthcare the most are the following:

  • 75% believes in mobile devices  and patient applications,
  • 66% in advanced analytics,
  • 59% believes in unified communication / collaboration tools which improve treatment adherence and communication

If the above tools are in place and interoperable it could mean much for healthcare. Think about early detection of diseases, providing insights about most effective treatments,  accelerating pharmaceutical research, increased efficiency through improved workflows and that all whilst making healthcare more accessible and engaging.

There is definitely a lot of work to be done, but very soon we will see the differences it can make.

This post is based upon this research.

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