Why the future of healthcare lies in a digital world

"The adoption of digital healthcare technologies was already gaining significant traction before the COVID-19 pandemic hit," explains Dr Ryan Noach, Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Health. "The past 18 months has seen an explosion in the demand (healthcare consumers) and supply (healthcare practitioners) sides of digital healthcare, leaving the industry forever changed. One thing that the pandemic has taught us is the importance of looking around corners and of staying ahead of current trends. In the face of a stressor or environmental pressure, the ability to adapt is fundamental to remaining relevant.

One of the ways in which healthcare professionals can prepare for the healthcare landscape of the very near future is to upskill around digitisation. This is the reason why they're being encouraged to transform their current business models. This will not only ensure that they'll be better prepared for future challenges, but they will also be investing in their future success in a digitally-driven world."

-Read all about how Discovery's HealthID 2.0 platform can seamlessly assist your patients during consultation

Why it's time to embrace the world of digital healthcare offerings

Dr Noach offers three reasons why this is the way to go:

1. Digital health technologies provide immediate solutions to emerging needs

To a large extent, the seismic shifts in the healthcare landscape caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, were driven by two sudden, urgent and parallel pressures.

• The elevated COVID-19 exposure and health risks faced by consumers and healthcare professionals put physical distancing in the spotlight.
• This was juxtaposed with a simultaneous and urgent need to maintain and to broaden access to high-quality healthcare to as many people as possible.

This unique convergence of pressures caused rifts in the traditional mechanics of accessing healthcare. These rifts we quickly filled by digital healthcare technologies. A shift to online doctor consultations allowed healthcare practitioners to pivot in the face of a global pandemic and to consult with their patients remotely. Patients could consult their doctor from the safety of their homes - or at any remote location of their choosing. Doctors - who were being infected with COVID-19 and falling severely ill all over the world - were similarly protected from sustained exposure to high viral loads in face-to-face consultations, through this digitally enabled medium

Pursuant to the global trends that emerged, and pressure from healthcare professional bodies, the Health Professions Council of South Africa provided enabling regulatory support for online doctors' consultations.

Recognising the critical importance of healthcare access to save lives during the early pandemic lockdown in South Africa, Discovery Health partnered with Vodacom to offer free Covid-19 screening and virtual doctor consultations to all South Africans. In addition to the amazing enhancement of care for healthcare consumers, this platform also gave participating primary care doctors an important source of continued earnings, whilst simultaneously limiting their risk of exposure to COVID-19. In the context of the massive shift in health-seeking behaviours, which left many family physicians practices quite empty, this was highly valued.

2. The patients have spoken

Discovery Health has offered online doctors' consultations since 2017.

Over the period of the pandemic, which forced social distancing on our lives, Discovery Health has seen a huge spike - a 35-fold increase - in uptake, during the first wave. This trend generally continued through the subsequent waves as well.

This experience is mirrored, and heightened, in digitally advanced markets. For example, in the USA, McKinsey reports that provider remote consultations grew by 50 to 175 fold in 2020. Equally from the consumer perspective, the percentage of American consumers using digital healthcare platforms has grown in a similar exponential fashion - from 11% in 2019 to 46% in 2020, with 76% of consumers interested in using telehealth going forward.

With this in mind, Discovery Health has over the past year, reinvented the digital healthcare platform - "Connected Care" - to offer a more sophisticated, slick user interface for both the doctors and consumers. More than 7000 local doctors have engaged on the platform and more than a million members of schemes administered by Discovery Health have used it.

- Find out more about Discovery Health's member-facing platform Connected Care

3. Remote care technologies are revolutionizing the doctor/patient experience

For millions of consumers the world over, engaging in online consultations and using telemedicine has proven to be a "gateway experience".

People have had a "taste" of what is possible in the universe of connected care technologies, extending from professional advice to diagnostics and even digital therapeutics. Remote care technologies are also patient-centric. Having a single electronic record linked to every patient allows all caregivers and all the healthcare providers throughout the healthcare ecosystem to really understand everything the patient's medical history and better manage their care, also ensuring continuity of care across providers.

Another gateway into this world is the arena of wearable devices, such as the iconic Apple Watch. However, the power of these sorts of sensing technologies extends beyond day-to-day lifestyle activities, even as far as highly sophisticated remote ICU monitoring.

Essentially, these technologies facilitate on-demand access to high-grade clinical and diagnostic consultations, anytime, anywhere; better chronic healthcare delivery and management with live, two-way virtual communication channels between patient and healthcare provider; and high quality, hospital-level acuity care offered in the comfort and safety of one's own home.

Whilst virtual consults have suddenly become a commodity in the global healthcare world, we are excited about the future prospects for the advancing spectrum of digital healthcare. Soon we will live in a world in which the unthinkable, has become possible. Imagine these contexts:

• Your doctor's virtual consultation with you - from your smartphone device - includes a clinical-grade assessment of your vital signs, your eyes, ears, nose and throat, your breaths sounds and your heart sounds.
• Your doctor chooses to admit you to hospital, in your own home, and provides all monitoring and care remotely
• Your doctor chooses to prescribe a digital therapeutic - gives you a script to download an app - to help treat a range of conditions including ADHD, depression, insomnia and more.
• Your doctor manages your chronic illness through careful trend monitoring and alert management, by studying your health biometrics in the cloud, from wearable sensors and pumps that you wear day to day
• Your doctor improves your day-to-day lifestyle and wellbeing by prescribing digital programs and monitoring - likely including wearables

These are all imminently realistic, accelerated by Covid-19's advent. We have digital advanced healthcare by hyperspeed, as a result of this unexpected external force.

Connect to the future

"There's no doubt that going forward, digital health technology will play a vital role in meeting the needs of ever-more engaged, informed and connected patients who want faster, safer, more affordable, real-time access to care," says Dr Noach. "Discovery Health will continue to investigate and invest in this landscape and we encourage all our healthcare professionals to embrace the global shift to connected healthcare too."