Reflection: Why is anticipating and adapting to trends in medicine crucial for effective healthcare delivery?

To prevent an aging population from being a burden on an already overwhelmed public health sector, it is important that healthcare shifts from being reactive towards being proactive. Staying ahead of trends in medicine, such as exploring predictive modelling to support clinical decision making, enables us to address causal determinants rather than focusing on treatment. This approach is a more efficient use of resources and is scalable to a population level. Even when treatment is necessary, trends such as remote data mining and smart devices enable health practitioners to guide the treatment process for patients who are unable to visit a health facility. Wisepill Technologies implements a form of this pattern monitoring to determine the adherence of TB medication intake.

The “information revolution” is enabling the global population with greater access to smart devices and the internet (Khedkar & Sahay, 2019). This invariably exposes people to more opportunities and threats, and the healthcare industry needs to be prepared to maximise the benefits and minimises the risks this poses (Yu & Meng, 2022). We have seen how telemedicine has been a significant impact on communities that are physically alienated from health services and during pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet in this same space, research has shown how misinformation severely impacted vaccination rates. We see how the health industry was not adequately organised to deal with the public health threat that is misinformation.

We can also see how trends in domains that initially seem outside of healthcare, such as rising consumerism (particularly in developed nations), can be missed opportunity for the industry. Amazon has eloquently placed itself in a position to exploit its consumer engagement platforms to enter the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. If healthcare organisations lag too far behind market players whos sole interest are profits, this could be a significant threat to patient-centered care.

This demonstrates the need for healthcare to be a pervasive and omnipresent industry and it should never be disconnected from any discipline. The healthcare industry being permeable to trends means missed opportunities to improve the health of a population group or it gives rise to a health threat.

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References

Khedkar, P., & Sahay, D. (2019). Trends in Healthcare and Medical Innovation. GLOBAL INNOVATION INDEX 2019, 87.

Yu, J., & Meng, S. (2022). Impacts of the Internet on Health Inequality and Healthcare Access: A Cross-Country Study. Front Public Health, 10, 935608. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.935608