Technology can cure healthcare’s inflation sickness

Digitisation and new technologies must be used to counter the spiralling and unsustainable cost of healthcare, say experts.

Medical care budgets around the world soared 6.8% in 2020 against a global inflation rate of just 2.4%, according to insurance brokerage and advisory company Willis Towers Watson.

This highlights a longstanding problem for many first world countries. For instance, the UK’s average annual healthcare expenditure increase since 1958/59 has been 3.9%, consistently higher than its own national and the global inflation average over those years.

Technology can cure healthcare’s inflation sickness

And the Office for National statistics estimates £269 billion was spent on UK healthcare in 2020 – 20% more than 2019.

The World Nano Foundation (WNF), a not-for-profit organisation that supports commercialising nanoscale technology including nanomedicines, says the issue must be addressed:

"Current operation of global healthcare is simply not sustainable,” said WNF co-founder Paul Sheedy. “Our centralised model uses hospitals to treat almost every ailment or condition, but patients should only come to hospital when they cannot be treated and monitored at home. This is what has fuelled this above-inflation high-cost system and incidentally, also exacerbated the COVID-19 infection rate.

"And developing countries are trying to copy these costly and inefficient systems too, leading to poorer quality of care and disease infection risk.”

Instead, he called for a decentralised and sustainable model, utilising digitisation and technology:

"Last year's pandemic showed that we already had the technology to diagnose and treat patients at home through telemedicine, while cost-effective remote health monitoring devices for multiple diseases and health issues are also arriving and improving constantly.

"Meanwhile, other technology and treatments are also being developed to enable hospitals and health centres to treat patients more quickly and effectively, and avoid  being overloaded.”

Paul Stannard, chairman and general partner at the Vector Innovation Fund (VIF), which specialises in investment towards healthcare technology and pandemic protection, also voiced support:

"COVID-19 has shown us that global healthcare must evolve into a more efficient, cost-effective system, and I’m hugely encouraged to see how healthcare tech investment soared 47% in 2020 to a new sector high of $51 billion, with healthcare tech investment deal sizes rising to record levels during 2021 so far.

"Investors are continuing to back the sector to thrive, after seeing that healthtech is on the verge of some ground-breaking innovations."

Technology investment will transform global healthcare away from an illness service

Healthcare must become a genuine health service, not an illness service, according to Robert Stern, chairman of digital health champion Future Perfect.

It was currently too reactive instead of preventive, he argued further in an article for the influential multi-media Health Tech Digital outlet:

“The journey a patient takes is, in theory, a simple, step-by-step process. When no more care is needed, the journey ends – until the next problem arises.

“It waits for problems to appear before action is taken. It doesn’t make use of the active, digitally enabled patient.”

Technology investment will transform global healthcare away from an illness service

Stern advocates a two-prong approach to creating a preventive healthcare system: empowering the patient to prevent illness and then breaking down barriers to prevention over cure. 

He urges increased use of healthcare apps to empower patients while integrating them with patient journey records. With patients managing their own care, problems could be spotted sooner, helping to avoid crisis while giving patients greater access to their GPs and specialists.

“These apps could become a staple part of the patient journey that often traverses beyond the pathway of any one particular condition. This would allow both patient and clinicians to have a view of the patient’s history to date and, also, keep an eye on the future,” he added.

Stern also wants interconnected electronic records tracking a patient’s complete healthcare history and journey through the system – past, present, and future:

“Person-based illness prevention is already known to be ‘investible’ and pursuing prevention by leveraging joined-up records could offer so much more.”

But Stern stresses that investment is critical:

“Take public healthcare and apply it to person-based illness prevention. Organise and synergise existing collection systems and apply the data to the person. It changes the dynamic of the patient journey from being focused on the extremes of acute illness to being about health – the whole cycle.”

“There are so many examples you can think of where this might work, from asthma to diabetes, and we need investment in this area to make it happen.”

World Nano Foundation chairman Paul Sheedy agrees strongly with Stern that investment into healthtech and nanomedicines has to be accelerated, as we cannot afford the hugely inefficient centralised healthcare systems that we have. We have to move to a point of care model that supports early intervention and protection:

“A prevention-based healthcare system would drastically reduce healthcare costs, prevent suffering for many individuals, and free up time for healthcare professionals to save more lives. The benefits are undeniable – we simply must invest.

“We need to back emerging therapies too. No healthcare system can completely prevent illness, so we need the best treatments available to us when needed. Investing in therapies will help to create more accessible, portable treatments, further decentralising healthcare worldwide.”

Paul Stannard a general partner of the Vector Innovation Fund, which recently launched a sub-fund raising an initial $300m for future healthcare, as well as pandemic protection and preparedness, focusing on precision medicine, advanced point of care, early intervention diagnostics and AI technologies that support sustainable healthcare, the global economy, and human longevity.

“Over 50% of the world’s healthcare budgets go on putting a sticky plaster on people’s health, but most of it is spent on the last six weeks of our lives, essentially end of life care, which cannot be the best model for a healthy world. We have been tracking these advanced technologies for five years and are seeing huge potential upsides for global health, which will deliver much more affordable and accessible technology solutions that deliver better outcomes and, ultimately, a more sustainable healthcare ecosystem.

“The recent pandemic has profoundly highlighted that early intervention is key to solving the biggest health challenges we face and moving to a more decentralised model based on technology investment is the key to sustainable health and improving life longevity.”