Poised for change 2021

The outlook for healthcare delivery has been transformed dramatically in 2020, paving way for some significant changes that are going to take place in 2021.

mHealth takes centre stage. The healthcare data consumption by end users is going to be on the rise. Public and patients are not only going to use their mobile for reading their diagnostic reports and prescriptions, but also going to use multiple apps centred around wellness, preventive health and healthy diets.

Health identifier. Government of India’s healthcare ID is going to play a significant role in consolidation of healthcare data on care continuum for the individuals. This is subject to a unified interface to feed the reports and prescriptions linked to this healthcare ID. HealthTech solution providers should keep in mind the interfaces to capture the data coming from multiple sources into their web applications and/or APPs. Willingness of hospitals and healthcare practitioners to share the data on a common API links is a key.

Clinical trial solutions adoptions is going to be on rise. The recent pandemic has made the public more aware than ever on the importance of clinical trials. Increasing public scrutiny of different phases of the clinical trials, is going to push-up the demand for robust IT tools and platforms to monitor the trials more attentively. Regulatory supervision on the trail data is going to increase. More and more pharma and bio-tech companies are going to demand solutions for remote clinical trials (at home services) without the need for subjects to visit hospitals.

Governments are going to focus more on digital health. With WHO stressing the need for digital health to improve the accessibility and affordability, more and more governments are already stressing the importance of preventive health and wellness of their population, by experimenting with digital diagnostic and monitoring solutions that work in low resources settings in remote locations.
Collaborations and consolidations may see a push in the HealthTech market. With many startups offering very specific and siloed solutions going to realize that they can not offer their solutions in isolation. There is going to be increased collaboration between the startups and SMEs to provide combined and comprehensive offerings to the public. This may result in more collaborations and consolidations in the HealthTech industry.

Vaccine supply chain is going to push up opportunities beyond vaccine companies. As the vaccination drives have started in multiple countries, especially in a big way in India, there is going to be a major demand for ancillary business beyond the Manufacturers. Soon based on the first vaccination drive, the eco-system will be learning from the challenges. Mostly the challenges are going to be around storage, shelf-life, accountability, bottling, vehicles, last mile distribution, adverse reactions monitoring, fraud detection etc. The technology and brick and mortar companies in the core sectors will have opportunities for scaling up and help establish a new normal for vaccine/drug supply-chain. There is going to be enhanced proliferation of transportation and cold storage sectors leveraging technology.

Transformation and rebranding as healthcare companies. We could expect transformation and rebranding of pharma, bio-tech, MedTech and health insurance players as healthcare companies, as their focus has already shifted from managing their core business to creating an impact on people’s life. They are moving closure to the healthcare delivery to refine their business models to adapt to the peoples need. We could expect more people-centric programs from these organizations.

If data is oil – healthcare data is rocket fuel. With technology proliferation into the healthcare, there is going to be zillions of data points collected by multiple companies including the care providers. Everyone is interested in this real-world-evidence to model their care delivery, create new protocols for therapies, optimize their supply chain, improve the customer retention and understand the population health dynamics. With the customers demanding more and more personal health data in structured way, technology is going to be at play in defining the data strategies. If the companies can overcome and take care of the privacy challenges, this data is going to be driving better R&D.