Digital Transformation potential in eHealth
Healthcare systems worldwide are under intense pressure due to aging populations, increasing expectations of individual users and the higher costs of ever more sophisticated treatments.
A host of digitally transformative solutions can help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare systems, treating more patients with less resources by adopting technologies such as IoT and AI. It will be critical for a diverse range of healthcare providers to adopt such technologies in order to align available resources with user expectations.
Eight key domains of change in eHealth
Overall, we have identified eight key domains of change in the eHealth sector that are enabled by digital transformation, as illustrated below.
These domains of change are discussed in more detail in our report Digital Transformation in the Healthcare Sector:
The domains of change discussed in the report comprise:
Connected Medicine Dispensers including medicine dispensers used at home typically by the elderly to help administer the dispensing of medicines.
Remote Patient Monitoring encompasses connected devices used to monitor a patient’s health status including vital signs (such as heart rate, oxygen level, blood sugar level), and detection of events such as patients falls, potentially alerting care teams in case of emergency.
Clinical Environment Patient Monitoring includes connected beds, enhanced ICU monitoring, and wearable patient tracking tags.
Patient Data Management includes digitally transformative solutions used for patient records management.
AI-based Diagnostic Solutions including AI-based analysis of images (such as CT and MRI scans) to assist radiologists and doctors.
Surgical Robots including robot-assisted systems to support surgeons performing minimally invasive surgeries.
3D Printing including the construction of prosthetics, joints and dental implants using additive manufacturing technologies.
Asset Monitoring includes tracking and monitoring solutions to safeguard hospital assets (equipment and supplies) and prevent theft and misuse.
Collectively, the activities listed above will bring significant changes to the eHealth sector.
IoT and eHealth
IoT is one of the key technology groups impacting the eHealth sector and further detail and analysis of key IoT applications for the eHealth sector can be found in Transforma Insight’s Forecast Insight Reports. Some of these applications are directly relevant to the sector, whilst others are only indirectly related.
Directly related IoT applications and Forecast Insight Reports include:
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Personal Assistance Robots
– This Application Group covers fully autonomous machines which undertake a diverse set of use cases including security monitoring, maintenance, human interaction, companionship and the performance of other tasks. This includes robotic pets, cleaning robots (e.g. Roomba), lawn mowers, exoskeletons, cooking robots, room and table delivery, and concierge services.
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Healthcare Monitoring
– Includes clinical remote monitoring for heart disease, diabetes, and pulmonary disease (COPD). Also includes wearable fitness tracking devices (but not smart watches), and various home health monitoring devices such as connected bathroom scales. Also includes patient tracking in clinical environments such as hospitals.
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Portable Information Terminals
– Portable information terminals for staff in a range of vertical contexts, including retail and hotels.
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Telemedicine
– Mobile location telemedicine to extend the reach of medical services into underserved regions, typically in emerging countries. Fixed location telemedicine to increase the convenience of provision of medical services, typically in wealthier countries.
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Security Tracking
– Includes a range of security-related applications such as for security guards, prison guards, and also offender tagging. Also includes ‘smart soldier’ equipment used by defence personnel in a military context.
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Worker Safety
– Personal monitoring and support solutions for fire service, police, and emergency medical service personnel. Also includes lone worker safety in multiple vertical industrial contexts, particularly those involving dangerous environments such as logging and mining.
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Dash Cams
– Aftermarket in-vehicle cameras used to record the interior or exterior of the vehicle, often to provide evidence in the event of a road accident.
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Assisted Living
– Assisted Living solutions include people tracking devices for the elderly and infirm, and comprehensive, connected medicine dispensers, assisted living solutions for patients that need significant day-to-day support or monitoring. Within the niche of assisted living, connected medicine dispensers play a crucial role and are used to promote patient adherence to prescriptions.
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Precision Specialist Robots
– This Application Group comprises machinery focused on a diverse range of specific tasks including remote surgery and automated manufacturing robots. These will all operate at the highest levels of autonomy, without requirement for human intervention.
Indirectly related IoT applications and Forecast Insight Reports include:
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Trigger Devices
– Devices that exist to be triggered to indicate an action needs to be taken, typically something has been filled and needs to be emptied, or something is empty and needs be filled. Examples include buttons for room service, table service, the replenishment of communal supplies, mail delivery and collection boxes, and customer voting buttons.
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Delivery Robots
– This Application Group covers small (i.e. not capable of intercity travel or carrying passengers) fully autonomous vehicles that travel on road or pavement to deliver food, beverages, retail shopping, documents and other goods.
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Asset Monitoring
– This application group encompasses a variety of assets that are suitable for remote monitoring. This includes the monitoring of livestock and associated applications such as automated feeders. It also covers the monitoring of fitness equipment located in gyms and other shared contexts. Tracking and monitoring of equipment in ambulances is also incorporated as part of the healthcare vertical.
Furthermore, this Application Group includes connected video gaming machines, gambling machines and other devices such as pachinko machines. Monitoring the condition, availability, and use of assets important to public health such as life rings and defibrillators is also present in this application group, including access to potentially dangerous infrastructure such as substations.
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Child & Pet Tracking
– Dedicated devices for tracking children, including anti-abandonment devices used to prevent children being left in cars. This Application Group does not include mobile phones, or any assisted living devices used by children. Tracking devices for pets, mostly cats and dogs but also potentially other household pets. Both kinds of tracker typically include GPS location capabilities and mobile connectivity, although some may use network triangulation based location to extend battery life.
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Unmanned Aquatic & Aerial Vehicles (Drones)
– This Application Group consists of two main categories. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles comprises fixed wing and propellor powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for military, government consumer or commercial use. Unmanned Aquatic Vehicles comprise small underwater and surface vehicles, typically for military use or exploration. Neither vehicle is designed to carry humans; automation of vehicles that carry humans (e.g. full sized planes or ships in automation mode) is covered under autonomous vehicles.
Other content and related analysis
Besides the detailed sector-focussed content described above, Transforma Insights offers an extensive range of thematic- and vendor-focussed research that will prove invaluable to any end-user seeking to leverage new and emerging digitally transformative technologies.
Of particular note are our Vendor Insight and CSP Peer Benchmarking reports, which provide detailed profiles of leading vendors who might be able to support a range of end-user digital transformation projects.
Our Key Topic Insight reports focus on the qualitative aspects of Digital Transformation, including investigation of interesting or noteworthy topics.
Detailed analysis of regulations that might apply to digitally transformative projects around the world can be found in our Regulatory Database. Meanwhile, our Case Study Database contains more than 1,000 case studies of technology implementations. Each case study contains detailed information on the specifics of the deployment. Used in aggregate it can provide unrivalled guidance on project prioritisation, best practice and vendor selection.
