MedCityNews Unveils Top 5 Healthcare Innovation Trends for 2019

Recently, MedCity News released a report titled “Top 5 Innovation Trends in the Healthcare Industry for 2019.”

VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) has compiled and translated the main content of this report for you.

Based on this report, we aim to address the following issues:

1. As the forefront of health tech, what is currently capturing the most attention in the U.S. healthcare industry?

2. Through Sarath Degala, we can gain insights into which sectors and technologies investors deem worthy of investment.

3. Will these trends shift the direction of China’s healthcare industry? Can domestic healthcare companies leverage them to adjust their future strategies and layouts?

Below are the five major areas of medical innovation and their trends that will impact the healthcare industry in 2019:

It is undeniable that the United States is grappling with a severe opioid epidemic. Currently, more than 130 people die each day in the U.S. from opioid-related drug overdoses. Reports indicate that 80% of heroin users had previously misused prescription opioids before using heroin.

The United States remains highly focused on the opioid crisis, which has indeed underscored the prevalence of behavioral health disorders. The scope of identification and treatment for behavioral health issues has expanded from eating disorders, anxiety, and depression to include suicidal ideation; however, the U.S. healthcare delivery system has not yet been fully established to enable rapid and accurate assessment of patients’ mental health status at all points of access to medical services.

In the United States, the cost of treating behavioral health conditions continues to rise. Methadone and buprenorphine treatment centers have grown increasingly popular in recent years. Medical expenditures solely for treating prescription opioid misuse exceed $28.9 billion annually.

There is an average delay of 8 to 10 years between the initial onset of mental health symptoms and the commencement of intervention. Healthcare providers need to improve their ability to identify and treat behavioral issues before they escalate into serious problems.

Mandatory behavioral health screenings and technologies designed to better manage medication dosages are expected to increase in medical practice. The search for alternatives to opioids, along with new processes and technologies to prevent the potential misuse of these drugs, will be one of the most significant trends in the coming year.

Another trend that will significantly impact drug research and healthcare technology is the rise of precision medicine, or pharmacogenomics. This approach to patient care has already achieved remarkable success in oncology by focusing on patients’ protein interactions and genetic makeup to optimize treatment regimens.

By comparing a patient’s tumor DNA with that of their normal cells, researchers can gain insights into how cancer develops and identify therapeutic targets. By tracking the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor, physicians can also determine which treatment is most effective for the individual, thereby enabling personalized, targeted therapy.

A new study by U.S. biotechnology company Scipher Medicine found that 65% of patients prescribed the world’s top five best-selling drugs did not respond to the therapy. The healthcare industry needs new approaches to curb excessive spending on prescribing and drug research, meaning precision medicine will have an immediate impact.

Precision medicine is expected to gain popularity in fields beyond oncology by 2019. This year, Northwestern University conducted a new study that applied precision medicine to rheumatoid arthritis by analyzing the genetic profiles of joint tissues, thereby determining which medications are suitable for which patients. The use of patients’ own stem cells to grow replacement tissues offers an entirely new approach to personalized treatment. Researchers studying multiple sclerosis are now also able to identify prognostic biomarkers to track and predict individual disease progression and determine the most effective therapeutic interventions.

Anticipating Robust Investment in Precision Medicine by Pharmaceutical Companies in the Coming Year

We have observed a steady increase in the number of patients receiving treatment in ambulatory surgical facilities over the past four to five years. Patients are being educated on the concept of “the right care, at the right place, at the right time” to help them understand the benefits of receiving timely treatment at specialized care centers rather than undergoing inpatient hospitalization. Insurance companies, through incentives and prior authorization requirements, have spearheaded much of this education, facilitating the shift of traditional inpatient surgical procedures to outpatient settings.

Importantly, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and other outpatient centers are becoming increasingly specialized, with a focus on delivering higher-quality patient care. As minimally invasive vascular surgeries are performed in ASC settings, complex surgical procedures are expected to continue migrating into the outpatient arena.

Some studies have shown that ASCs offer more pronounced therapeutic efficacy and lower infection rates, potentially saving millions of patients’ lives each year. Therefore, we anticipate that innovations addressing the needs of these more specialized centers will emerge in 2019.

FortiGuard Labs reports that, over the past year, healthcare organizations have faced an average of 32,000 cyber intrusion attacks per day, compared to an average of only 14,300 for organizations in other industries. In terms of cybersecurity standard-setting, healthcare institutions still lag significantly behind the financial and retail sectors. Moreover, although data provided by financial service institutions or retailers may be more useful to cybercriminals, stolen health data can actually be worth 10 to 20 times more than credit card information on the black market.

Healthcare organizations are expected to take significant steps in 2019 to narrow the gap between healthcare cybersecurity standards and those of other industries. However, in terms of cyber vulnerabilities, this year may prove to be the worst on record for the healthcare sector. Over the past year, data breaches have increased every quarter, with 4.39 million medical records exposed in the third quarter alone. Although investors in the healthcare industry continue to fund new security measures, cybercriminals are constantly demonstrating increasingly sophisticated intrusion techniques.

Another trend influencing the healthcare industry is the growing prominence of artificial intelligence (AI) research and applications. Over the past year, the number of transactions and equity financing deals for healthcare AI startups has steadily increased, reaching a record high in the previous quarter. This has made the healthcare sector the most active industry in terms of AI-related transaction activity.

Innovations in robotic process automation, manual task automation, and deep learning have all opened up markets for robust applications in the healthcare industry. DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, plans to launch a clinical trial in 2019 to test a product capable of diagnosing eye diseases using artificial intelligence technology. Apple has also invested in the ResearchKit and CareKit software frameworks, which leverage machine learning to provide medical researchers with more reliable and meaningful data. BeyondVerbal, another AI startup, is researching speech patterns with the aim of diagnosing chronic diseases via telephone calls.

Hundreds of promising new medical AI projects are currently being launched. There is no doubt that hundreds more will emerge in 2019. Pharmaceutical companies, in particular, will drive this trend by investing early in artificial intelligence technologies. Several major acquisitions in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning are expected in 2019, which will reshape the entire industry.

While we consider these trends significant in 2019, they are merely the tip of the iceberg. Healthcare professionals and investors must closely monitor these and other emerging trends, as they will evolve over the coming year and beyond, exerting varying degrees of impact on the healthcare industry. As the healthcare sector continues to undergo reforms aimed at improving patient care, investors must also understand how to adjust their investment strategies accordingly.