Making a Real Difference with Healthcare Tech Innovations

Looking back at 2024 we see how technology continues to permeate every layer of healthcare and is increasingly implemented to alleviate the struggles of everyone involved in the sector—providers, payers, and patients. Holding a promise to sustainably improve the quality of care, a number of technology trends stood out as impactful in the sector last year. In our article, we’ll outline some of the most notable tech innovations that marked 2024 and laid the foundation for the trends that we expect to observe this year. We’ll also uncover the challenges that drive the emergence of these trends. And the discussion will lead us to a very important question: Is cutting-edge technology on its own enough for a solution to make a meaningful difference for users in the healthcare system?  

The Challenges Remain the Same 

With every year that passes, healthcare innovators add fresh examples of stunning technology that delivers new treatments and services. However, on a very high level, the main challenges of the industry in the US have been the same for years: high costs, inefficient processes, stubbornly poor health outcomes, and unsatisfactory patient experience. Recent Deloitte research cites that 55% of healthcare executives see improved customer experience as a priority for the coming year. Respectively, the trends in healthcare that we witness on a high level are achieving cost containment, greater efficiency, improved results, and better experience. Those processes have been relevant for quite some time, but what has shifted is the awareness of how much we can accelerate them. 

Tech Innovations 

The list of technological advancements that marked healthcare in 2024 is enormous, and, with the scope of this article, we’ll highlight just a couple of major trends. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

It won’t surprise anyone if we begin with AI. Solutions powered by artificial intelligence have numerous applications in health organizations ranging from reducing staffing shortage and enhancing diagnostics to data protection, sharing, and analytics. For example, researchers at the Cedars-Sinai have applied two AI models to analyze chest computed tomography (CT) scans and achieved high-accuracy evaluations of cardiovascular risk in patients. The combined model approach improved risk categorization in over 25% of patients.  

The opportunities for personalization and insights generation based on collected data are an especially powerful use of AI. When designing a digital health product, we usually attempt to drive behavior change (e.g. encourage people to exercise more or take their medications on time), and the more we learn about the individuals acting within the solution, the more successfully we craft a digital experience that encourages a certain behavior. AI can quickly consume huge amounts of data and surface up personalized suggestions and programs, thus contributing to better health outcomes. 

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)  

Personalized health technologies have accompanied humans in their everyday life for nearly two decades. Various forms of connected, wearable, or implanted devices gather and provide real-time health-related metrics, granting the user a greater awareness of their health and helping healthcare professionals create accurate treatment plans. Although this is not a new tech trend, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) continued to gain traction in 2024. A network of medical devices, hardware components, and software applications, IoMT technology ensures the transfer and analysis of medical data.  

A great example of connected technologies is a mobile app we created for our customer that helps people suffering from lymphedema, lipedema, and chronic venous insufficiency manage their patient journey. An application is connected via Bluetooth to an external hardware device which pumps pressurized air through hoses into a garment attached to an affected body area, thus improving lymphatic fluid movement. The digital solution incorporates several functions: a knowledge section, an order tracker, a segment to track symptoms and treatment sessions, and an option to share treatment logs with healthcare providers.   

Solutions That Solve Real Problems 

The connected technology above benefits not only the patient, but also the client as they draw on the data they collect from the app, learn about user habits and behaviors, and get a further understanding of how patients use the device. But will this be a successful business for the company if the solution, however advanced it might be, doesn’t encourage patients to use it? If it doesn’t drive the desired behavior change, does it justify the resources invested in its creation? 

Nowadays, it’s perfectly doable to develop a mind-blowing digital something. What’s harder, though, is to build technology that successfully solves a specific problem. Healthcare organizations shouldn’t get dazzled by the hype and implement the latest tech without enough consideration. First, they must find the answers to these questions: 

• What is the purpose of this solution? 
• Why do we think it’s important? 
• Who is going to use it? 
• How do we make sure it serves the purpose? 

Only after solving this complex equation, healthcare companies can move on to consider the technical dimension of the solution they envision.     

Design Thinking and Focus on the User 

To develop technology that makes a real difference for the people it serves, it’s critical to take a multidisciplinary approach where we simultaneously consider business viability, technical constraints, and the desirability for users. In other words, design thinking is about intentionally not starting with the solution but looking for the overlap between the business problem, the technical feasibility, and the user problem.

It might often feel easier and faster to start building a product without “wasting” time on seemingly unnecessary considerations, but it’s vital to start by putting an emphasis on the human in the equation. Whether on the insurer, the payer, or the patient side, an effective healthcare system is oriented around its users because they are the ones it serves. In the context of medical device apps, design thinking and a human-centric approach are necessary to convey the information to the patient in a way for them to understand and respond to it, thus helping them get through their behavior change. 

On the flip side, even unconsciously, users don’t have high trust in a system that feels old-fashioned and is hard to navigate. Trust is extremely important for healthcare solutions because they go beyond providing simple everyday services, like tracking parcels, for example. They provide care and must be accessible, intuitive, and accurate to gain the unconditional trust of their users. To achieve this, we do user research where we uncover who the users are or would be and interview them to understand what their experience with the solution currently is or would potentially be. These insights are the foundation on which we plan and initiate the process of building the application. 

Conclusion  

Many effective and innovative solutions in healthcare aren’t cutting-edge technology. They are simple, well-thought-out products put together in such a way that they create an experience that’s compelling for users. Of course, if you can do that with more advanced technologies, you’ll be able to multiply your results.