2022 marks the second full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it continues to dominate health systems’ attention and resources. Despite COVID-19’s many devastating impacts, it does present the health care sector with a powerful opportunity to accelerate innovation and reinvent itself. COVID-19 has accelerated numerous health care trends, being catalyst to initiate and accelerate many of the longstanding challenges and opportunities arising from many pressing sector issues facing the global health care sector.
The 2022 Global Health Care Outlook report developed by Delloite, identifies six global health care sector issues
- Health equity. It’s more than equitable access to care, it’s an opportunity to achieve an overall state of well-being encompassing clinical, mental, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual health, and it is influenced by not just health care, but also social, economic, and environmental factors.
- Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). The public health community has dubbed climate change the 21st century’s greatest threat to public health. No country or continent is immune from the health impacts of worsening global climate change. These factors can have a direct effect on population health and further stress health care infrastructures.
- Mental health & well-being. Recent health, climate, and political crises have both highlighted and exacerbated the world’s mental health challenges. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on fissures and failings within the global mental health system and the institutions surrounding and supporting it.
- Digital transformation and health care delivery model convergence. Health care delivery has been under intensifying pressure and scrutiny during the pandemic, as health systems around the globe struggle with skyrocketing patient numbers, employee burnout and workforce shortages, supply chain disruptions and equipment scarcities, and insufficient and/or outdated facilities. Health services have a real ally in technology to respond to these problems.
- Future of medical science. Breakthroughs in digital medicines, nanomedicine, genomics, microbiometrics/metabolomics, and others are occurring at an unprecedented and exponential pace, bringing new innovations and driving more predictive, preventative, personalized, and participatory (4P) medicine.
- Public health reimagined. The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the dynamics of public health. The scope and persistence of this global crisis have exposed vulnerabilities in countries’ public health systems and impacted their ability to effectively detect and respond to the continually shifting emergency in a multidimensional way that could have mitigated its impact. This situation has awakened government, industry stakeholder, and consumer awareness of public health systems requires systemic change and cross-sector coordination.
At INSATI we focus our efforts on the application of technology (Mhealth, decision support systems, MIoT, ….) to different areas included in these major challenges, such as mental health (EpredictD, ePD-Work), chronic diseases (Avecen) or environment (Coviled).