Increasingly healthcare providers are pushing key elements of the care process out to the edge of their healthcare networks. In the future patients will be cared for in their own homes or a GP’s surgery rather than in expensively equipped hospital. Healthcare has followed other sectors, such as financial service and retailing, in the separation of key customer facing operations from bricks and mortar infrastructure. The logic driving this transformation is that patients consume more resources the closer to the centre of the healthcare providers network they receive treatment or care. As wireless technology increases flexibility at the edge of networks it has a key role in this new healthcare delivery model and could support a number of disruptive processes within the healthcare sector.
There are a range of issues to take into consideration when implementing the remote healthcare model. Most important is that, currently, the patient is being pushed away from healthcare providers bricks and mortar rather than intercepted on their journey into the centre of the care network. This is due to the limitations of the current ehealth model, which is focussed on remote care rather than remote diagnostics. The model itself is a reflection of what is possible given the current state of healthcare IT and the market for ehealth services.
The current ehealth model supports the collection of a limited range of vital signs data. There is some analysis on this data and the model does provide a degree of remote support for the patient. However, the analysis of vital signs data is carried out by medical personal and the support is provided via a call centre. This means that the model will not scale to deal with large numbers of patients. Missing, is the intelligence that would enable the ehealth service to automatically provide care and spot short and long term trends that indicate a person, who is not yet a patient experiencing, or is likely to experience, problems.
A new ehealth model is emerging based on a wider range of devices, automated analysis of vital signs data and feedback to the patient or their carer. A number of vendors – in particular IBM and Oracle – are developing technology that will add intelligence and diagnostic functionality to the ehealth model. At the same time manufacturers are attempting to push wireless medical devices into the consumer electronics market. The resulting model will be one that scales easily and can intercept a person at risk before they enter the healthcare system.
This report examines the impact an ehealth model based on automated remote diagnosis will have on the healthcare, IT and communications market. This report also describes what is needed in respect to both technology and marketing to turn the current ehealth model into a service that works as a truly disruptive tool within the healthcare sector.
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