The healthcare industry is on the cusp of a massive technological transformation, with global consultant company, McKinsey, estimating a meteoric rise in global digital health revenues from $350 billion in 2023 to $600 billion in 2024.
With these levels of investments and revenues, it’s clear that healthtech innovation is a priority, holding promise to reshape healthcare as we know it. New solutions—from software and wearables to robotics and biotech—will soon drive enhanced access, care quality, and much more across prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and overall health management.
If you’re not familiar with healthtech or the healthtech industry, read the overview below to learn more about the top trends of 2024.
What Is Healthtech?
For starters, healthtech refers to the use of technology to improve and transform healthcare. Encompassing solutions like software, data analytics, AI, robotics, and biotech, healthtech aims to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and overall health management in the modern age.
6 Trends to Watch in 2024
The healthcare industry is set to experience a number of technological disruptions in 2024 across several sectors. Here are the top six that are forecasted to make the biggest waves:
Telehealth
Telehealth delivers remote healthcare services through digital platforms and holds the power to improve access to care, reduce costs, and improve efficiency—which ultimately feeds into patient satisfaction.
In 2024, telehealth will keep expanding and offering more services. It’s also being implemented into solutions like wearables, remote monitoring, and AI to enable more comprehensive, personalized care.
Wearable Devices
Wearables like smartwatches and fitness trackers gather health data in real time, from heart rate and blood pressure to activity and sleep. This helps users monitor their health daily, track their progress, and share insights with providers to improve diagnosis and treatment.
Wearables are expected to see more advancements in user-friendliness and affordability throughout the new year, with additional and advanced capabilities that will serve diverse needs.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence took the world by storm in 2022-2023. This type of technology is able to perform tasks like data analysis, pattern recognition, and decision making.
AI is invaluable in its ability to provide healthcare professionals with more information and recommendations, serving to improve care. AI also optimizes processes like diagnosis and billing, while saving time.
Throughout 2024, AI adoption in healthcare will accelerate further, enabling more innovations while keeping ethics, privacy, and trust top of mind.
Robotics
Robotics can assist or even replace healthcare professionals for precision, efficiency, and of course, safety. Robots can also help with patient comfort and consistency of care, since robots don’t take days off.
Robotics will likely gain more advanced functions in healthcare throughout 2024, overcoming barriers to become more affordable and widely adopted. It’s anticipated to be especially useful for healthcare operations, alongside surgical functions.
Biotechnology
Biotechnology takes biological systems and organisms and uses them to produce solutions like gene therapy, synthetic biology, and regenerative medicine.
By addressing unmet needs, biotechnology enhances treatment safety, quality, and accessibility—all while reducing costs. In 2024, biotech will rapidly progress, with more regulated applications and breakthroughs.
Blockchain
Blockchain’s secure, transparent ledger technology is particularly effective with reducing healthcare data errors and costs, while also empowering patient data ownership.
In 2024, blockchain is anticipated to see more large-scale adoption, especially as compatibility and compliance barriers are addressed. Healthcare professionals can expect this technology to play a larger part in the field throughout 2024.
The Future of Healthtech
As highlighted in the trends above, 2024 is poised to usher in a new era of healthcare transformation.
Driven by rapid healthtech innovations that promise enhanced access, improved outcomes, lower costs, and more personalized patient experiences, the industry is on the brink of positive disruption. And, while risks may still remain, the potential is vast, outweighing them.
Collaborative healthtech adoption will change the landscape in 2024 and beyond, promising a new era of healthcare driven by new technologies.
Genefic stands for increased technology and improved healthtech as part of our ideas of redesigning health systems and reimagining patient care. To learn more, feel free to contact us today.