Meeting the demands of the virtual care revolution

Current forms of telehealth are not enough to address the immense challenges facing global and local healthcare in the 2020s. As well as taking diagnostics to the home, there’s a need to revolutionize healthcare with a wider range of treatments in this setting. Clinical hardware purposefully designed for safe and effective use by patients at home will represent an increasingly important part of the equation over the next decade and beyond.

Our Architecting Digital Health Platforms series explores core segments of the dynamic digital health environment. We unravel the complexity and identify issues that medical device and biopharma companies may need to overcome to gain competitive edge. Demand for virtual care solutions is set to increase, so we consider how to get a head-start with focused innovation.

With the relative cost of healthcare provision on the up, new approaches are needed to ensure growing and ageing populations receive quality care. According to a report published by the World Health Organization: “Total health spending is growing faster than gross domestic product, increasing more rapidly in low and middle income countries (close to 6% on average) than in high income (4%).” Public Spending on Health: A Closer Look at Global Trends (2018)

But does increased spend equate to improved outcomes?