Forecasting the Future of Healthcare Democratization

Abstract

Health longevity, cost reduction, prevention-based healthcare, personalized medicine, predictive diagnostic, transformed care delivery, de-aging, healthy lifestyle trends, and implementation of intelligent technologies should lead to a more democratized (availability for everyone on this planet) healthcare provision. Forecasting the future of healthcare and health policy certainly is imperfect but nevertheless a precious scientific approach that can lead to novel innovative approaches. In the last decade, the healthcare system faced several challenges, including the significant increase of care costs, demographic changes towards the older population, inability to prevent and overcome pandemics, increased chronic and non-communicable diseases, or resistance to adopting emerging technologies. The need to shift the focus from sickness to health becomes a critical mission. We developed a lecture titled "Healthtech Innovation Design" for graduate students from medicine, biomedical engineering, neuroscience and software engineering. The lecture's goal is to teach innovation methodologies, exponential technologies and methods to achieve healthcare democratization. A critical component is to promote initiatives with global teams focused on the future of health. The educational and initiative programs were impactful in growing interest toward innovation, focusing on disruption and healthcare democratization. Participants awareness towards the main issues and challenges was raised. Interdisciplinary participation was qualitatively processed to generate a holistic vision toward innovation. Through embracing digitalization to a patient-centric approach, affordable care services, and the expansion of precision medicine, the entire healthcare organization and management will likely undergo a worldwide change. Notably, digital technologies, the leverage of artificial intelligence and empathy would satisfy unmet clinical needs. With a future-oriented statement, the forecast of healthcare becomes more imaginable, in which democratization will allow the affordability of services in different countries and economic status.

Keywords

• democratization
• disruptive technologies
• unmet clinical needs
• healthcare innovation
• education and training
• biodesign
• design thinking.