Healthcare in 2020

While quality and cost of care have remained key areas of focus, industry analysts say the coming year will be a reality check for long-pending national healthcare policies and regulatory reforms that should enliven future strategies. They also see China continuing its drive to perform better in regard to important health metrics, with an eye to becoming the “world’s best and cheapest health system.”

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Looking beyond quality and affordability, the analysts say for 2020 there will be a shift towards predictive, preventive, and outcome-based care models that promote social and financial inclusion.

These are the trends and technologies predicted to become major disruptors in healthcare for the next 12 to 18 months:

1. Increasing use of SDOH analytics platform

Medical care accounts for only 10%-20% of health outcomes while the other 80%-90% are attributed to social determinants of health (SDOH) – including demographics, environment and socioeconomic factors, according to Frost & Sullivan. By the end of 2020, 40% of the U.S. health systems and commercial payers will use SDOH data of some type in making risk assessments, patient outreach, and business decisions.

2. AI develops more use cases and faces more ethical challenges

AI applications in the medical imaging market are projected to cross $400 million in 2020, while AI investment in the pharma sector will continue to rise especially for drug discovery applications. Despite AI tools’ improving performance, a question still remains: What happens if something goes wrong? The perceived safest way for physicians to use AI, from a liability perspective, is more as a “confirmatory tool” for existing best practices, rather than as a way to improve care with new insights.