Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan believes that the advent of AI, data analytics, mobile health apps, and personal wearables will be the game changers that would transform the world of healthcare. One digital technology that the received the thumbs down was the massively-hyped blockchain which is cool and sexy but was adjudged not ready for primetime.

Fred Donovan reports on healthcare game changers for Xtelligent Healthcare Media:

The market research firm predicts that the market for healthcare IT applications using artificial intelligence will reach $1.7 billion by the end of 2019, growing at a robust 68.5 percent of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2022.

“AI-powered IT tools that manage payers’ and providers’ business risks in clinical, operational, financial, and regulatory settings will especially find high uptake,” said Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health Industry Analyst Kamaljit Behera.

Frost & Sullivan expects the healthcare big data analytics market to reach $68 billion by next year as more specialty-specific products are used by providers.

In addition, the market for digital health technologies enabling out-of-hospital care will total $25 billion, growing by 30 percent this year. Key segments include remote patient monitoring devices, telehealth and mHealth platforms, and personal emergency response systems.

By the end of this year, Frost & Sullivan expects the global healthcare market to exceed $1.96 trillion. Up to 15 percent of healthcare spending is expected to be directed toward value-based care concepts. This will cause a surge in the number of risk-sharing contracts between providers and drug and device makers, driving business value for providers, it predicted.

One technology that is not expected to have a major impact on healthcare this year is blockchain. “Blockchain in healthcare is slowly starting to migrate from pilot proof of concept (PoC) to early commercial implementations,” said Kamaljit.
Forrester Research Senior Analyst Arielle Trzcinski agrees that healthcare blockchain won’t take off this year. “We think blockchain is overhyped. What we find is organizations using blockchain just to be able to say they are using blockchain. They are not necessarily tapping into the power of blockchain in terms of security and transparency.”