The results of HFS’ Pulse study for 1H 2022 tell us a lot about the technology trend across the healthcare provider segment. Firms have ranked cybersecurity and microservices, web 3, and metaverse as the top 3 investment technologies. Cybersecurity and microservices have been the top trends for a few years, but web 3 and metaverse are new entrants in the healthcare domain with increased focus and investment, which suggests a potential change in the patient engagement paradigm.
- Metaverse is a 3D network of computer-generated worlds emphasizing social connection among people. It’s been showing promising use cases across healthcare. It can be used across activities such as training medical professionals, remote mental health care with a better experience, remote physical therapy, and planning and practice of surgeries beforehand. Recent examples include the Thumbay Group opening UAE’s first metaverse hospital to address medical tourism needs. HFS covered metaverse in healthcare in detail, which can be found here.
- Web 3.0 core lies in the blockchain, a distributed ledger system. In this case, data is spread across distributed ledgers, and any user action gets updated on the blockchain, preserving the history and verifying the activity across the distributed ledgers. Web3.0 can be used for cases where data is stored related to healthcare, such as EHRs, EMRs, practice management systems, and HIMS. Healthcare using web3.0 have been showing promises across updating data management. Transferring data from siloed, centralized software to interoperable, patient-owned, immutable records could solve many data privacy and security problems. Anyone wishing to change or use healthcare data without permission faces an impossible task because the data is distributed across distributed ledgers. Combining web3.0 with 5G could change the face of data security across healthcare.
- Microservices software development has been gaining transactions across healthcare. Microservices, if deployed correctly, can solve data privacy issues. A microservices architecture makes it possible to isolate services that touch data. For example, for provider service, the patient portal can be managed with multiple services and then scaled individually with a central database. This significantly reduces the portal and maintenance cost and scale as per requirement.
- Another trend that we saw across healthcare is an investment in cybersecurity. Cyberattacks are of particular concern for the health sector because attacks can directly threaten the health and safety of patients. Out of many examples of healthcare-related cyber-attacks, a recent example includes the Ohio-based Memorial Health ransomware attack. The hacker group named Hive launched a ransomware attack that shut down Memorial’s IT systems, leading to canceled surgeries and diverted ambulances.
The Bottom Line: 2022 is already an exciting year for emerging technologies with Web 3.0 and metaverse. We will continue to see growth in emerging technologies to deliver new treatments and services, but only if they enhance health outcomes.
Explore the HFS Pulse Dashboard
Take a look at the breadth of data in our Pulse Dashboard, which showcases data about current and future demand trends for technology and business services and related emerging technologies. See more here.
