Trends in Healthcare at Arab Health 2017

The Medical Internet of Things

It will come as little surprise that connected technology remains one of the hottest topics. However, while in the past this has been focused on personal health products and fitness wearables, this year we saw the Internet of Things make the leap into medical devices.

The Philips biosensor, for example, is a modern answer to an old problem. “Forty percent of unanticipated deaths occur on the general ward,” explains Rob Cascella, who oversees the Diagnosis and Treatment Businesses at Philips.

The Philips biosensor links to IntelliVue and other monitoring systems via Bluetooth and is so adaptable and portable it can even be worn by patients in the shower, hopefully providing the vital clues that a critical event is on the way.

A critical view of Big Data

Like IoT, big data has been a healthcare buzzword for the past couple of years; this year’s Arab Health was no different but Philips CEO Frans van Houten suggested that it’s time we start thinking more critically about the concept of big data.

“We manage petabytes of imaging data. But is that alone enough? Not unless it’s actionable. We have to put that data in the right hands and use it to drive towards precision health, towards ‘the industrialization of care’ to increase efficiency and identify waste, and towards improved access to care through technology.”

Virtual Reality

The whole world is in love with VR at the moment and Arab Health was no different. While for some it was a gimmick to attract visitors to their stand, there were also far more impactful uses of VR that suggested it could become a valuable aid for delivering education and training to healthcare professionals, or helping designers to create the perfect operating room. However, Augmented Reality (AR) offering were in short supply at this year’s show.

New models of healthcare

Arguably the most ambitious and high-level trend was around the need for a different model of healthcare – a move away from sick care and towards true healthcare, as Dr Vivek Muthu, co-chair of the Economist Intelligence Unit Healthcare, put it.

“Advances in technology and services have been phenomenal, and economic and social development have raised the floor for all of us. But there are still reasons to be cautious about healthcare models. The old model was based around acute diseases and in that way, hospitals make sense as opportunities to isolate patients. But now we’re looking at more chronic lifestyle diseases that we have to live with for long times. Rising costs accompany the treatment of these diseases but more money doesn’t always mean better outcomes either.”

So what will new healthcare models be based on?

Collaborative healthcare

If AI sounds futuristic and intangible, Jeroen says it’s time to think again. “I have thousands of images stored on Google Photos, and I can ask to see only the images containing my son and daughter. In an instant, those images appear – even if my son is just in the background somewhere. So facial recognition AI is already better at finding objects in images than people. Now apply that to healthcare imaging!”

So what could be the practical applications of such technology?

“Alzheimer’s leads to brain atrophy. To the naked eye, images taken weeks apart look very similar, but AI can detect the changes, patterns and biomarkers. There are applications for imaging, digital pathology but also genomics where the information is so complex and there’s so much data to process that AI is the only way to do it.”

Arguably the overriding takeaway from this year’s Arab Health then was that technology and healthcare are converging more and more and will continue to do so in the years ahead.

The final word from Philips’ Jeroen Tas.