With 2023 firmly in the rear-view mirror, the healthcare sector now turns its gaze to 2024. 2023 saw its fair share of economic and political turmoil worldwide and the explosive growth of generative AI.
ChatGPT and similar programs are poised to disrupt almost every industry imaginable, and innovations seemingly continue to be made daily.
So, what will 2024 bring? What will continue to dominate the public consciousness, and what will rise to prominence in the coming year? We've compiled this list of what we consider to be 2024's top technology trends in healthcare.
AI Implementation
The hot-button topic of 2023 will likely continue to disrupt the healthcare industry in 2024. Artificial intelligence is no longer a thing of science-fiction stories or marketing gimmicks but a competent tool waiting to be integrated into various roles.
While AI deserves a spot on this list on its own, it also intersects with multiple other trends in the sector, as we'll see later.
On its own, generative AI and machine learning are particularly promising in both documentation and diagnostic imaging. AI can be implemented to speed up routine documentation tasks such as filling out paperwork or transferring information from one file to another.
It can also "listen" along as a physician talks to a patient about their condition, taking notes as they go and allowing the physician to focus purely on the conversation.
In diagnostic imaging, an AI can be "trained" to spot visual indicators of disease, such as neoplastic lesions in a patient's colon. The AI can then highlight these lesions for healthcare providers during a colonoscopy, making identifying and removing these pre-cancerous growths easier.
While these algorithms require powerful AI-powered medical PCs, the technology that supports them already exists and is currently available.
The greatest challenge for AI will be meeting regulatory compliance and gaining the trust of both governments and healthcare systems. Providers are understandably hesitant about using new tools they feel are untested, so ensuring accuracy and reliability will be critical for gaining widespread traction.
Cybersecurity and Regulatory Compliance
Do you know how many healthcare records were breached over the last three years?
2021: 45.9 million
2022: 51.9 million records
2023: 133 million records
This cannot continue. Cybercriminals are now aware of the value contained in personal health information and the relative weakness of security in the healthcare industry.
A data breach can easily interrupt services at a hospital, especially during a ransomware attack where criminals shut down access to systems or networks until the target pays up. Compounding this are the fines and penalties from government bodies like the FTC, the Department of Labor, and state-based entities.
Healthcare entities must embrace better practices for cybersecurity, both for their sake and the sake of their patients, if we are to see fewer data breaches in 2024. Fortunately, change is coming. Healthcare groups increasingly prioritize cybersecurity, recognizing that digital health is as important as physical health when protecting patients.
IT budgets are expanding, and more groups are hiring chief information security officers (CISOs) with the same authority level as a CFO or CMO.
New changes to the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are also a significant concern for 2024. The amendments to HIPAA require medical device manufacturers to implement more robust cybersecurity measures. These include risk assessments, incident response plans, and data encryption practices.
The amendments also strengthen the requirements for groups to notify their customers of breaches and give patients more access to and control over their health data.
Device manufacturers must update their development processes to maintain compliance with these new regulations or partner with companies that already do so.
Wearables
The market for wearable devices continues to grow, increasing from $59.12 billion in 2022 to $73.77 billion in 2023. It is projected to reach $428.92 billion by 2030. This trend in healthcare technology includes devices such as smart watches, heart rate monitors, and fitness trackers that can be worn directly on the human body.
These gadgets are already incredibly popular among consumers and are seeing increased use by healthcare professionals. Wearables' ability to provide real-time data benefits individuals trying to beat a personal fitness best and physicians attempting to develop patient fitness regimes. More specialized devices can even detect low blood-oxygen saturation and alert emergency services.
Also included in this category are devices like hearing aids, which have seen significant improvements thanks to recent technological innovations.
Starkey Laboratories has recently unveiled Genesis AI, a new hearing aid that uses neural network tech to scan the environment and automatically adjust as acoustics change. According to Starkey, the hearing aid can also function as an exercise aid by monitoring step count and heart rate, as well as detecting falls.
These multifunctional devices will likely become even more popular in the future.
Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
The continued expansion of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is directly tied to the growth of wearable health devices. Consumer-grade smartphones and tablets are just one part of this growth. Inside the hospital, IoMT is used for everything from inventory management to mobile access to ECG data.
IoMT is critical for effective asset tracking systems, like monitoring the location and status of medical equipment around a hospital. By knowing which room a device is in and whether it's currently in use, staff spend less time looking for the right resources.
IoT sensors can also remotely monitor the temperature and humidity in facilities or storage containers, critical for sensitive materials or specimens like donor organs.
The same theories behind asset tracking can also be applied to patient monitoring. Sensors worn on the patient's body, sewn into their gown, or attached to their bed can detect falls or unusual movements, alerting staff to a potential emergency.
Even autonomous robots for monitoring blood pressure and oxygen saturation levels have been tested and implemented in real-world conditions. Managing a fleet of robots from a single medical computer or tablet can remove a massive weight from providers' shoulders, letting them focus on other tasks that require a human's attention.
Cloud Computing
As healthcare becomes increasingly data-driven and reliant on IoT devices, methods for sharing this data will also become increasingly vital. More and more healthcare groups have turned to cloud-based solutions to manage and share their data, with 70% of healthcare businesses reporting doing so.
Embracing cloud-based services has several advantages:
- Data storage is cheaper and safer with the cloud than on-site servers.
- Collaboration is easier between entities that have shared access to the cloud.
- Cloud storage enables big data and AI-powered applications. These include analyzing patient EMRs to find readmission patterns or possible environmental factors causing illness.
- Because cloud storage is not committed to physical infrastructure, healthcare groups can scale their data storage up or down as needed. They can purchase more server space from their provider if they need to expand their operations.
For these reasons and more, we will continue to see cloud computing as one of the leading healthcare technology trends for 2024.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine is one of the significant healthcare technology trends from the past few years that continues to gain ground. The ubiquity of digital communications and the internet has made mobile healthcare an obvious avenue to pursue.
For patients, having access to digital assets saves them time and money from visiting a doctor or hospital in person. For healthcare providers, telemedicine allows them to provide solutions to patients faster, saving face-to-face time for those who genuinely need it. With these reasons in mind, it's no wonder the global telemedicine market is projected to hit $286.22 billion by 2030.
Effective digital assistants will undoubtedly be crucial to telemedicine's continued success. AI-driven chatbots are available 24/7, can answer questions about patient care options, and can be integrated into pre-existing structures for tasks like billing, booking appointments, and more.
They can also be configured to help patients uphold their end of care, such as sending reminders for medication usage and exercise. Implementing these tools can save time for providers and let them focus on other tasks.
Personalized Care and Pharmacogenomics
Also called "precision medicine," personalized healthcare is treatment tailored to the specific patient. In theory, a tailor-made plan should lead to better patient outcomes and a more efficient use of resources.
However, creating such a precise plan would require enormous amounts of time to properly research a patient's environment, medical history, genetic background, and other factors, time that providers don't have.
Recent advances in the science of pharmacogenomics may change that, however. Pharmacogenomics is the study of how a person's genes affect their response to drugs and can be implemented to craft customized medicine specifically for them. Personalized healthcare becomes far more feasible when paired with AI's data analysis capabilities.
For example, the Tel Aviv-based firm Genetika+ clones a patient's brain cells and then exposes them to different antidepressant medications. Genetika+ records the cellular changes caused by this exposure and cross-references it with the patient's medical history and genetic data to determine the most effective drug for that patient.
Virtual and Augmented Reality in Healthcare
Virtual and augmented reality continue to see broader and broader implementation in the healthcare sector as more groups come to understand its applications and benefits.
The largest application for both VR and AR remains in education. By creating an interactive 3D image of a human body, future providers can be trained in a more immersive format than simply reading diagrams in a textbook. The same technology can also help explain procedures to patients before surgery, building trust and confidence between them and their surgeons.
Outside of the classroom, both AR and VR are seeing increasing adoption as everyday aids for providers. For example, AccuVein AR technology projects a map of a patient's vein structure over their skin, making it easier to find a vein for needles delivering intravenous medication.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has partnered with AppliedVR for their immersive therapy program targeting lower back pain. Similar programs are being explored for palliative and mental healthcare programs.
As AR and VR technology becomes smaller, cheaper, and easier to implement, we will undoubtedly see more examples of its use soon. At the current rate, the global AR and VR healthcare market will be worth $5.1 billion in 2025.
3D Printing
3D printing is already widely used in healthcare for creating medical device prototypes and pre-surgery mockups. 2024 will likely see even greater technology adoption.
The current most prevalent usage for 3D printing in the field is for developing new medical devices, as it lets manufacturers quickly and affordably iterate on prototypes. For instance, if a device's casing is too large or too small, they can quickly print a replacement in the appropriate size without changing their manufacturing process or tooling.
Providers also often use 3D printing to create reference models of a specific patient's anatomy based on CT and MRI scans, giving them a better understanding of what they're dealing with.
One field that is ready for 3D printing is prostheses. One of the most significant challenges for amputees is that prostheses are often available only in limited sizes or are too expensive for a custom-fit model.
However, 3D printing's flexible manufacturing process lets healthcare groups and volunteer communities like e-NABLE print prosthetic limbs precisely measured for the individual in need. Even better, these designs are open-source and incredibly affordable, making them ideal for economically disadvantaged individuals and families.
However, the most significant advances in the field are in bioprinting, the practice of printing organic tissues and structures. Organic tissue is far more complex and difficult to print than metal or plastic, but advances in the field are occurring.
The current frontier involves printing materials called bioinks containing all the necessary cells and polymers onto prebuilt "scaffolds" that resemble the shape and size of things like blood vessels and muscle tendons.
While it sounds like pure science fiction, 3D printing entire human organs from a patient's stem cells may be closer than we think. These organs would not deal with rejection issues like donor organs, leading to better long-term outcomes for patients.
Nanomedicine
Speaking of science fiction, nanomedicine is also poised to make waves in 2024. As the name implies, nanomedicine is the practice of using nanotechnology in healthcare. Previously valued at $170 billion in 2022, the nanomedicine market is expected to hit $493.67 billion by 2032.
The biggest driver behind nanomedicine's growth is its ability to deliver extremely precise treatments that other methods struggle with. For example, nanomachines might replace viral vectors for usage in gene therapy, as nanobots are not susceptible to causing oncogenesis (which can lead to cancer) and do not trigger immune responses.
Cancer treatment is another part of healthcare that can benefit from nanomedicine's precision. Immunotherapy, the practice of using a body's immune system to fight cancer cells, has far fewer adverse side effects than radiation or chemotherapy but can lead to autoimmunity or inflammation.
Nanobots could deliver immunostimulatory molecules, encouraging the body's immune system to take action at targeted cancerous cells while sparing healthy cells around them.
The accuracy of nanomedicine ensures that healthcare groups will continue to invest in the field, making it more than worth watching going into 2024.
Prepare for the Future with Cybernet Computers
2024 promises to be an eventful year for the healthcare industry. Echoes of the past, new technologies dominating the public consciousness, and innovations that were once the domain of fiction are all converging simultaneously.
Adapting to and embracing these trends will require agile thinking and reliable tools to integrate new technologies as time passes.
If you need a skilled manufacturing partner or source for medical-grade tablets and computers, contact the team at Cybernet Manufacturing. Our products are ready to embrace the latest healthcare technology trends, from cloud computing to telemedicine to AI, without sacrificing reliability or user-friendliness.
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