The emerging digital landscape of the 2020s

Health and care are going through a very accelerated phase of change. There are various drivers causing these changes and these are starting to demonstrably exert their influence as well as start to act synergistically. Among these changes:

Aging and accompanying multimorbidity, both of which drive increases in activity in existing health and care systems as they strive to manage noncommunicable diseases. This increase in activity puts further financial pressures on these systems which are already “over- trading” and further encourages the adoption of value-based solutions where prevention of disease becomes at least as important as treatment of existing conditions. The explosion of availability of data and the deployment of processes that allow for interoperability. This drives the potential to develop more customized treatment plans for people. This availability of data is likely to be further enhanced once 5G networks are employed and the internet of things enabled. The availability of genomic information around individuals which is becoming more commonplace and enables people to better assess their likelihood of developing disease and thus better target their efforts towards risk mitigation in situations where we understand the pathophysiology of disease and the behaviors we need to adopt to lessen the likelihood of developing these. The potential for us to be able to measure the epigenetic biomarkers that act as “switches” amplifying or turning off the effect of our genes and the increasing affordability of access to these biomarkers. At present these are mainly concentrated around the cardiovascular space, but no doubt the range will widen as science advances. Also the fact that the cardiovascular contribution to cardio-metabolic disorders is now understood to have an even more ubiquitous role is an added factor to take into consideration