Healthcare in 2022: Trends to Watch for

The world’s medical agenda in 2021 was largely conditioned by the continuing onslaught of the global pandemic. Stemming for a while from robust vaccination campaigns, the scourge has returned with a vengeance as its extraordinary mutability posed new challenges for pharmaceutical and healthcare experts to address. 

Evidently, the vicious attack by the unseen enemy—as well as many other ongoing problems healthcare providers face—can be repelled by leveraging the latest IT achievements and software solutions that across-the-board digitalization has bestowed upon us. Let’s look at the current trends in healthcare that came to the forefront last year and are likely to persist as vibrant healthcare trends in 2022. 

10 Major Trends in Healthcare We Will Witness in 2022

NIX United, as a seasoned IT company that excels in developing solutions for medicine, constantly monitors both enduring and emerging trends in healthcare that have the greatest impact on the domain. Analyzing them, we can make predictions about future trends in healthcare that will bring about radical changes in healthcare services in 2022. What will healthcare in 2022 look like?

1. Further Spread of Telemedicine

It can’t be counted among new trends in healthcare because the “remote everything” drive originated with the outburst of COVID-19. However, it has been gathering momentum ever since, largely switching numerous human activities to this mode—from shopping and entertainment to working and studying. Remote medical services are on this list as well, with providers intensely onboarding telemedicine technologies. This sector manifested an astounding spike just within a year (between March of 2020 and April of 2021) when telehealth procedures increased by over 3,000%!

The exorbitant growth rate of these kinds of medical services is quite easy to explain. Building a vital link between patients and doctors, telemedicine proved to lessen pressure on medical institutions overwhelmed by the influx of COVID-stricken people and eliminate contagion risks thus putting a halt to the transmission rate of the global plague. 

However, it would be an understatement to describe telemedicine as leveraging video calls between clinicians and patients where the latter can voice their complaints and the former can diagnose the disease and prescribe treatment. In fact, telehealth solutions encompass a whole system of follow-up options enabling prompt exchange and analysis of medical data, tracking implementation of therapy plans, and drastic minimization of treatment costs. 

Moreover, video conferencing opportunities that allow bringing together a pool of competent experts to compare notes and opt for the best method of curing a sick person open broad vistas before medical institutions. Participating in this most promising of the 2022 healthcare trends, organizations can expand their reach and significantly improve the quality of services connecting doctors and patients when and where convenient for both parties.

2. Wider Harnessing of Remote Patient Monitoring

Remote patient monitoring (RMP) is the extension of the previous drive in the field, turning both into mission-critical healthcare industry trends of 2022. There are two degrees of “remoteness” this technology is called to breach.

In the first case, the distance between the patient and the healthcare providers is not that great since both are within the premises of the same clinical facilities. Thanks to RMP, doctors and nurses can receive real-time reports on the condition of such individuals staying inwards to be able to lend a helping hand if the patient’s state demands it.

The second case is, in essence, the inauguration and/or sophistication of at-home lab test services. For some categories of patients like those with diabetes, the ability to have a quick blood test is often a life-and-death issue. Modern software that turns testing kits into IoT gadgets enables 24/7 connectivity of patients and physicians so that both can permanently control their levels of glucose wherever they are without wasting precious time to apply to service providers.

3. Ubiquitous Introduction of Medical Data Repositories

Traditionally, keeping medical records took the lion’s share of doctors’ working time. Patients’ histories tended to grow ever thicker over years, presenting problems for people to transport them and for doctors to find the necessary information on short notice. In case these records were lost or mislaid, all stakeholders were guaranteed a lasting headache to recover or recreate them. 

The advent of the digitizated age has fundamentally altered such cumbersome practices by ushering electronic health records (EHR). The latest trends in healthcare display the growing relevance of these solutions that remarkably streamline medical record-keeping by eliminating interoperability barriers, canceling the process of filling out tons of paper forms, and facilitating data search. Furthermore, having all the patient’s data in digital format at their fingertips, clinicians can swiftly form a 360-view of them and map out a comprehensive treatment plan. To enhance the accessibility of EHR and guarantee data safety, such medical dossiers are located in the cloud.

4. Medicare Personalization

The appearance of the increasing number of wearable solutions is one of the major trends in healthcare today and it is only going to get more traction in the future. Smart watches, wristbands, glasses, helmets, and other gizmos allow tracking the vitals of each person. Being aware of these parameters, doctors can issue targeted recommendations that will be one step closer to providing personalized healthcare services.

5. The Rise of Digital Health Insurance

Fintech solutions are all the rage in our modern IT-driven civilization. Today, people don’t have to visit brick-and-mortar financial institutions to get an entire range of financial services. Insurtech software, as a variety of this know-how, is progressing at a tremendous speed, offering patients multiple insurance plan options to cover all possible health risks and provide compensation in case they get sick or injured. 

One of the healthcare trends we will witness in 2022 is related to the incentivization strategies that service providers launch in order to encourage clients to pursue a healthy lifestyle, thus reducing the chances of occurrence of the insurance event.

6. Surgery Room Modernization

As digitalization disrupts all spheres of medicare, there is no reason why it shouldn’t cross the threshold of surgical theaters. Before its arrival, operations were a rather traumatic experience for patients. State-of-the-art solutions minimize all kinds of related risks even at the preliminary stage. 

For instance, surgeons can build 3D models of the organs they are going to operate on. Before they make an incision they can review the models and shape their operation algorithm to avoid excessive blood loss or other unpleasant emergencies a surgery might be accompanied with. 

Another upgrade a surgery room can undergo is a wide application of robotic arms that provide high precision of manipulation and rule out human factors that can have an adverse effect on the result of the surgical procedure.

7. Streamlining Medical Transportation Services

An ambulance isn’t the only means of getting to the hospital, but if patients can’t drive cars themselves or are unable to make use of public transportation facilities, they can be brought there by specialized service providers. Typically, such use cases involve non-emergency medical transportation extended to people from rural areas or those urban communities whose infrastructures are unsatisfactory. Companies that offer such services extensively rely on specialized software (mostly apps) that facilitate the delivery process efficiently. Such delivery is performed in vehicles properly rigged with equipment that can report patients’ medical data to the healthcare facility to prepare personnel for their arrival.

8. Improved Healthcare Forecasting

Reacting to immediate problems as they appear is not the most ideal strategy, and in healthcare, this is an issue of survival. Playing this frantic whack-a-mole game and trying to plug breaches that appear out of the blue here and there will lead to doom as the system eventually stops functioning. This is why one task of the industry that has begun this year is to adopt a predictive approach that will forecast future developments and pinpoint problem areas. 

Given the complex threats, the global scourge poses before humankind, getting insights into future events and tendencies can be effectively achieved via utilizing predictive analytics software. By monitoring historical processes, identifying persisting patterns, and building prediction models, specialists who are hired by healthcare providers to harness these technologies can perform knowledgeable strategic planning that would reduce possible negative consequences of the current and future pandemics. Such planning relates to various spheres of the hospital workflow—from the availability of specialists and vacant beds to the timely procuring of necessary materials and medicines.

9. The Surge of AI and ML Engagement

No review of medical trends in 2022 can be complete without mentioning the growing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Being not standalone technologies but rather underlying principles of functioning of multiple IT systems, these two can facilitate and streamline a lot of essential workflow processes in various healthcare domains. Such fields encompass drug discovery, clinical trials, diagnosing and treatment of illnesses, gene editing, optical character recognition, and more. 

For instance, computers can be trained to recognize illnesses assessing the outward characteristics of a person, classify skin lesions, analyze tomography images, predict side effects of medicine, select proper candidates for clinical trials, estimate risks of patients developing certain maladies (like a heart attack or a cerebral hemorrhage), etc.

10. The Spike in AR and VR Applications

AI utilization opportunities become much broader when they are used to power AR and VR solutions. Such a combo can be highly instrumental in providing diagnostic services or training medical students. Armed with these technologies, trainees don’t need dozens of flesh-and-blood patients to enhance their expertise. Instead, they can work with 3D images generated by respective equipment and can spend as much time as it takes to whet their skills. 

This know-how can benefit patients as well. As often as not, people are nervous before undergoing surgery since they don’t know what is going to happen or why it is necessary. In this case, specialists can reassure them by showing the image of their organ and explaining what the oncoming operation aims to achieve.

11. 3D Drug Printing

It may sound shocking but the FDA approved the first 3D-printed medicine more than 6 years ago. More will follow suit, turning the technology into a top trend in healthcare sooner or later. Of course, not all drugs can be produced in this way (nowadays, they are exclusively soluble ones). Moreover, stringent manufacturing specifications must be observed so that printed drugs can be efficient and safe. 

However, specialists predict that the next decade will see the appearance of 3D printing services at major hospitals where making medications from raw materials tailored to treat specific cases will gradually become routine and swift procedures, much like getting a cup of coffee from a coffee machine.

Summary

The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid and profound changes trying to address multiple challenges mounted by the outbreak of COVID-19. The major driver behind these changes is the latest IT achievements and novel technologies that considerably contribute to progress in the medical field. As a company with a number of delivered healthcare projects, NIX United can help you become a part of contemporary healthcare endeavors that bring the digitized future within our reach.