HEALTH CARE 4.0: INCREASING QUALITY OF SERVICE AT FALLING COSTS
The digital revolution is not stopping at the healthcare sector either. IOT and Big-Data offer enormous potential to improve healthcare while reducing costs. A welcome opportunity for investors.
The commercial breakthrough in digital medicine is having a major impact on today’s healthcare. Under the label “Digital Health”, increasingly modern technologies are driving progress in medical treatment.
Established companies in the digital health sector are already working on the next stage of innovation, which offers investors a wide range of investment opportunities.
Optimized Processes
The advantages of this development are clearly reflected in the medical treatment methods. Intelligent technologies such as sensors, networked systems or cloud computing enable companies to bring new or improved products and services onto the market that largely optimize treatment methods and increase their efficiency. According to a study by management consultants McKinsey, up to 300 billion US dollars can be saved in the USA alone through digitized medical care.
Example of widesread diabetes
Digital health companies are already using numerous established technologies and products such as blood glucose sensors and insulin pumps for diabetes patients.
With the goal of supplying diabetes patients with insulin, dosage algorithms, blood glucose sensors, smart pens/insulin pumps and nutrition portals from a single source in the future, the next major innovative leap will take place at the level of digitized services.
Virtual Medical Care
Medical consultation via web or telephone will become more and more important in the future due to voice- and video-based apps. Looking at the advantages, both, patients and medical service providers, benefit from virtual medical care. On the one hand, the patient saves transport and waiting times, and on the other hand, readmissions to hospitals can be avoided and costs for GP visits can be reduced.
In the USA, Teladoc Health, based in New York, is the largest provider of telemedicine. Its customers are primarily large companies, hospitals and health insurance companies.
The Next Big Thing
The development of digital therapeutics is the next major innovation leap in digital healthcare. Software-based applications for skin diseases as well as psychological complaints serve as precursors of this development. In the future, standardized processes of patient interaction will supplement or even replace the delivery of conventional drugs.
As a result, many attractive IPOs can be expected in the coming years. Some highly innovative companies with great market potential such as Inspire Medical Systems , Ping An Healthcare and Technology, Neuronetics and Guardant Health (US specialist for oncology) already made the leap to the stock market last year.
Venture capitalists from the USA, who have invested 27 billion US dollars in 1900 digital health companies since 2011, are also providing a further boost to innovation in the industry. Für einen weiteren Innovationsschub der Branche sorgen zudem auch Risikokapitalgeber aus der USA, die seit 2011 27 Mrd. US-Dollar in 1900 Digital-Health-Unternehmen investiert haben.
Strict regulation keeps competitors at a distance
Since in digital health, safety and clinical benefit have to be proven with extensive studies, this area is more strongly regulated than other technology areas and thus creates barriers to entry for potential competitors.
Investors have the opportunity to benefit from strong growth in digital health equities. Sales growth, the achievement of previously clearly defined milestones and M&A activities will have a significant impact on the value of equities in this sector in the short or medium term.
Source: Cover picture: iStock/asiseeit
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