Innovation in Healthcare is the Key to Better Access to Healthcare

Today, the healthcare industry is on the verge of massive change and is increasingly dependent on the industry’s ability to generate innovative ideas, processes, and solutions. Now is the era of staggering healthcare innovation.In the previous few decades, healthcare has encountered an explosion of innovations that are primarily targeted at improving healthcare services and the quality of life. Owing to the rising customer demands and rapid advancements, healthcare organizations were facing unprecedented challenges and were posed with the dire need to improve their quality of services, accessibility, efficiency, and lower the healthcare costs. To make it happen, innovation in healthcare emerged as the key solution and is now becoming a major focus.

The healthcare industry today is under extreme pressure of meeting the growing demand for services. In that sense, innovations are the way to achieve efficiency and improvements in how the healthcare services are delivered. Innovations spanning advanced technologies, new products/services, and new ways of operating solutions in the healthcare field are being looked for to bring in more opportunities to deal with the resource constraints and costs being faced by the industry. No doubt, innovations in healthcare are all set to improve the quality and efficiency of care through affordable healthcare solutions that would increase its reach and accessibility.

Importance of Innovation in Healthcare

The growth of the healthcare sector in India is largely fuelled by the changing demographics,rising income levels, and the increasing disease burden. Along with the growth, the sector experiences enormous challenges and opportunities driven by the pressures of the increasing healthcare costs and lacking access to healthcare. As the healthcare providers are grappling with challenges that hinder productivity, accessibility, and efficacy of the healthcare services, innovation in the sector is expected to pave way for the better quality of healthcare at affordable costs.

Adopting innovation in healthcare is increasingly becoming the norm as the scope and avenues of innovation in healthcare are aplenty. The compelling need for catering to the demands of the consumers and healthcare providers has propelled the emergence of frugal healthcare innovations. Particularly, developing countries like India and China are more ingeniously looking forward to picking the cues from the global healthcare arena to bring forth a potential change. Developing indigenous solutions and perspectives to meet the sensitive developmental challenges in the healthcare market so as to reduce costs and improve healthcare products and financial protection have been working as the key driver of innovations.

The majority of innovations in the healthcare industry, in the recent decades, have been focused on new diagnostic procedures, medical devices, alternative therapies, and drugs. Everything from new pharmaceutical procedures and surgical robots to more precise diagnostic scanners is on the rise to produce favorable results. The emphasis on innovation is centered on producing more comprehensive and integrated healthcare delivery organizational designs, more personalized healthcare solutions tailored to the specific needs and profile of the patients, more creative technology-enabled healthcare solutions, and efficient,proactive, and preventive healthcare models, capable of producing the intended results.

Technology and Innovation

While innovation in the entire arena of healthcare is critical to its growth and progress, technology-induced innovations seem to show a more dramatic pattern. Over the past two decades, the pace of innovation in healthcare technology is accelerating exponentially and there will be no slowing down anytime soon.Innovations in technology have been centered on improving access to health services, enhancing self-care, and responding to the rising demands for healthcare. After the emergence of the digital innovation, the advances in technology-enabled innovation is creating more and more possibilities and opportunities, thus changing the pace and focus on healthcare innovation for better.

The introduction of mobile health solutions has enabled real-time monitoring and response to improve health outcomes and efficiency of care. Similarly, modern technological innovations like telemedicine have paved way for connecting patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers to interact, diagnose, and observe health anywhere, anytime. The emerging trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have taken up a prominent place in the healthcare landscape and are helping increase the overall productivity while also paving the way to control the rising healthcare costs.

The technology and innovations are bringing a widespread impact on the overall functioning of the healthcare industry and has empowered the healthcare workforce to better manage patient health and wellness. Moreover, technological innovations are cost-effective and can quickly lead to the benefits of improved accessibility and affordability in healthcare. Currently, innovations in health technologies are considered the key towards improving healthcare access as it facilitates developing low-cost healthcare solutions that are both financially sustainable and affordable to increase the accessibility to healthcare.

In a nutshell, technological innovation that can bring about a radical change in healthcare services is the current need of the hour and is being hugely relied upon to bridge the gap between the current healthcare scenario and the healthcare accessibility. In that sense, technology is giving the required hope to improve the healthcare system with the prime focus on innovative healthcare delivery models and procedures that improve efficiency and accessibility. It is necessary for the innovators to identify the existing challenges and demands within healthcare segments and create innovations in those arenas that bring an immediate and large-scale impact across the healthcare continuum.