Over the last year, we’ve seen conversations discussing how to improve consumer healthcare skyrocket. According to PAN’s HealthPulse report, media chatter around patient experience increased 31% year over year from 2022 to 2023. Beyond that, AI, ChatGPT, and advanced modeling have completely taken over our newsfeeds.
Last week, we attended Healthcare Brew’s Bench to Bedside and Beyond: The Future of Health Tech event. Going into the conversation, we anticipated strong themes of AI integration and tools to improve bedside operations. We were surprised to see such a strong focus on community and bringing healthcare into the home. But where do we start?
2024 Consumer Healthcare Trends
Telehealth and Virtual Care
Based on conversation at the event, healthcare companies are seeing a large divide between patients when it comes to tech literacy, but consumers generally need to be more comfortable sharing information.
Katrina Rice, Chief Delivery Officer at PAN client eClinical Solutions, spent her panel, “A Win for Health Equity & “Techquity,” discussing how virtual care can level the playing field, expand access to care, and bridge tech literacy disparity gaps for patients. Through safe and equitable data collection, combined with undeniable convenience, bringing care into the home virtually can save money for patients and improve outcomes by limiting doctor visits for common needs.
In-Home Care
It may seem backwards after years of innovations that allow us to provide care virtually, but physically going into communities and patient homes is having a resurgence. Teladoc Health’s Opeyemi Oluwole shared how her team got on the road to rural communities they were attempting to market to, and had an eye-opening experience that changed how they approach communicating with varying populations.
Not only that, but as populations age – and as healthcare, if we’re honest, gets more difficult to understand – the industry is losing touch with patients who need critical care. Working with companies that focus on bringing care into the home is critical to ensure elderly populations are getting the attention needed, in what is often referred to as “hospital in the home.”
The Elephant in the Room
With all the different ways we can connect people to care, whether it’s virtually or at home, patients and researchers are faced with an influx of raw data without a clear understanding of how to make sense of it or apply it. At the same time, we’re at an exciting time when it comes to AI and data analysis.
Taking advantage of AI applications to change how we view and understand patient health was a clear theme during the event, and a topic of conversation we’ve noticed anecdotally pick up steam. Knowing how harmful AI hallucinations can be, physicians and leaders are concerned with GPT models, but – ideally – in the future, patients will be able to use tools to break down and make sense of their own data to understand where they are in their health journey.
The event shed a much-needed light on the realities we’re facing when it comes to consistent, accessible care in communities that are in remote locations such as deserts or unable to reach larger health systems for care, and the role that technology and data will play in the future of patient care.
At PAN, we specialize in telling healthcare brands’ stories, elevating their awareness, articulating their value propositions, and moving their audiences that matter most through our proven expertise and our brand to demand approach. We work with HIT and digital health brands at all stages of their growth trajectory to target their key audiences including life sciences, pharma, payer, provider, and employer/TPA/brokers.
Interested in inserting your company into these growing conversations? Get in touch!
