Health Tech Trends of 2022

Healthcare has always been a slow adopter of new technologies due to the high-risk and highly personalized nature of the medical treatment that requires extensive clinical testing before being introduced into the common practice. Nevertheless, slowly but steadily healthcare is joining such industries as education, gaming, and finance in adopting new technologies. Thus, in this article, SOLVVE invites you to examine health tech trends of 2022.

Health Tech Trend of 2020

Telehealth

Not so long ago we have discussed the brief history of telemedicine and its place in the healthcare of the future and landed at the conclusion that the share of the telemedicine market will grow and solidify over time. There are several reasons for that.

Firstly, healthcare consumerism has been gradually gaining traction up til these days and will continue to do so in the future. As the consciousness about wellbeing grows within societies, people are ready to invest more time, effort, and money into their health. In such a way, healthcare is seen as not only a human right but also as a commercial service where customers want to get what they paid for – the convenience of use, the flexibility of appointments, getting services within a convenient locality, or at home.

Secondly, the technological advance in healthcare made it about prevention rather than acute treatment. Thus, data collection, analysis, and follow-up communication can be done remotely. This, thirdly, in many cases it is only natural that remote consultations and treatments are the only way to go for many people making telemedicine number one on the list of the modern health tech trends.

Big Data through wearables

Wearables are probably at the core of the current changes in how health data is being collected. These devices create an ever-growing volume of information that can be further crunched for predictive analysis and such improvements as a faster and more efficient reaction to changes in patients’ condition.

Moreover, it allows for the drawing of personalized healthcare plans, including illness prevention measures. Finally, having enough reference data can slash the number of errors in choosing treatment courses and medication dosages while minimizing readmission rates and maximizing long-term care effects. Finally, remotely transmitted data can help to unload overwhelmed medical professionals and cut down waiting times for patients.

Nevertheless, the widespread use of such devices faces the problems of interoperability and storage capacities, not to mention risks to expose personal data. Which brings us to the next point.

Cloud

Cloud technologies can help to solve infrastructure and capacity issues as they allow for flexible scalability on demand and round-the-clock operations with little downtimes. First and for all, it is useful for keeping electronic records and digitization of many processes that steal the time which otherwise could have been spent on patient care.

However, currently, this perspective solution comes with a lot of limitations. On the one hand, it requires a stable internet connection that is not always available in many localities that could benefit from cloud technologies. On the other hand, there are limitations from the legislative side requiring compliance with numerous procedures that slow down the integration of cloud-based solutions.

Still, we believe that the cloud innovations will definitely stay a priority in a healthcare tech of today and the future working its way to a more widespread adoption through cooperation with legislative and other institutions to come up with the best practices that would benefit everyone involved.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Rooting deep in data science, Artificial Intelligence also feeds on collections of big data from wearable devices. However, applications may differ as well as the number and type of sources one uses for analysis and predictions.  

While personalization of treating plans still requires human judgments and experience as a final say, AI can help in freeing the hands of medical professionals through automation of such routine tasks as image classification. Radiological, ultrasound, MRI, and other images can be successfully analyzed and categorized by algorithms much faster than a human could ever do it. 

Moreover, AI has also proved to be efficient in the prediction of outbreaks of different devices in different localities thanks to its capacity to draw conclusions on huge sets of data, that among other things include ticket sales and information about animal farms’ conditions.

New realities

Although less discussed in popular science space then AI, Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) are nonetheless vital to healthcare tech advancement.

For example, VR is being used to treat mental health including, anxiety disorders, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorders through controlled exposure and through relaxation sessions. In combination with haptic feedback technology, AR can help in surgery planning and training for surgeons thanks to realistic recreation for the surgery conditions with zero probability of risking patients’ health. In the same way, it can help practicing professionals to improve precision during brain surgeries.

Most of these solutions are yet to be tested before they can be used o a regular basis. Even so,  Zion Research predicts AR and VR market to grow up to USD 5.1 billion worldwide by 2025. That is why the use of new realities among the health tech trends of 2022 in our overview.

To Conclude

All of the above-mentioned health tech trends of 2022 aim to predict and prevent diseases. And when those happen, to treat patients with the utmost possible speed and efficiency at the comfort of their home through virtual means of communications. If you have any questions or ideas related to healthcare technologies that could contribute to these trends, do not hesitate to contact us. Let us make this happen!