A Tipping Point In Healthcare’s Digital Revolution?

The digital revolution, which began several decades ago, has completely transformed how we access, collect and transmit information. In the last decade the 'internet of things' and the increasing capacity and capability of smartphones, tablets and more recently wearables, have had a profound impact on society as a whole. Changing consumer expectations, behaviours and demand. In response, businesses are constantly adapting and innovating from contactless and online banking services to smart energy meters and now the 'connected homes'.

Indeed many industries have transformed themselves. For example, today's car has the computing power of 20 personal computers, features about 100 million lines of programming code, and processes up to 25 gigabytes of data an hour1 – it alerts the driver when a service is due or a part needs attention, or even calls emergency services if the air bag is activated. Few drivers are aware of the full functionality, nor do they need to know, rather all that matters is the knowledge that the car's reliability has increased significantly. But can this high reliability approach be applied to healthcare? One area where this is starting to happen is in the adoption of digital health. As our recent report Connected health found, there is increasing evidence that healthcare may in fact be approaching a tipping point in its digital revolution.

One important aspect of this is harnessing the power of connectivity, so that healthcare (or aspects thereof) can be monitored and managed remotely, in real time. One example, with independent evidence providing a testament to its effectiveness, is the Philips Hospital to Home enterprise based approach to care delivery. Powered by data visualisation and decision support tools, it is enabling hospitals in the US to realise workforce efficiencies, increase reliability of interventions and improve outcomes as part of a whole system clinical transformation. Specifically it is:

Transforming critical care and helping to reduce mortality and length of stay in Intensive care units. The eICU clinical programme also helps address the issue of clinician and nurse shortages by blending medicine with technology and leveraging clinical expertise, patented processes and cutting edge technologies. The eICU programme can monitor multiple patients across a number of hospitals. A five year study of the eICU programme (118,990 critical care patients across 56 ICUs and 32 hospitals) found that patients...