Report highlights top five areas of innovation in health

A new report identifies the five most significant tech transformations for health, and also describes proven applications in health and offers a roadmap for actionable change in the next 12 months. 

The Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-2025, part of a three-year annual review, aims to build a sustained innovation pipeline, encouraging collaboration and long-term progress in the health sector.

Developed by the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN) Health Alliance, led by the RMIT-Cisco Health Transformation Lab, the report highlights top areas of innovation which can have a near-future impact on health care globally. These include:

• Augmented intelligences — the deployment of AI and machine learning to make health care genuinely smart.
• Simulation and simulacra — using digital replicas and simulation technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, digital twins and 3D printing, to hack the real world.
• Remote patient care — leveraging digital means to provide care that meets the patient where they need it.
• Health system adaptability and dynamism — technologies that foster system resilience and adaptability in times of rapid change.
• Harnessing biotechnology breakthroughs — building the future of health care through truly exciting science and technology development.
   

Other advances, such as quantum computing and blockchain, were excluded from the report as, despite their great promise for addressing complex health problems, applications of these technologies are still experimental and cannot be readily actioned in healthcare settings over 2024–2025, according to the authors.

Collaborative action to drive transformation

The report highlights case studies of real action across each of the above-mentioned five transformation dimensions, each demonstrating what is possible today along with the pitfalls and challenges to navigate. It pulls from almost 10,000 journal articles and trends reports, including from Forbes, MIT, CSIRO and Google.

The NIIN is inviting healthcare providers, policymakers, technologists and researchers to join the alliance and collectively drive innovation and create a collaborative, future-ready healthcare ecosystem. The report aims to be a clarion call to action, urging stakeholders to move beyond the theoretical and into practical implementation.

“Together, we can harness the power of digital transformation to improve patient outcomes, streamline operations and create a more resilient healthcare system,” the NIIN said in the report.

Tectonic shifts and new models of care

The Executive Chair of the RMIT-Cisco Health Transformation Lab, Professor Vishaal Kishore, said, “Health has always been a creature of technological change. Tectonic shifts in technology have always made new modes and models of care possible. What has changed has been the pace of technology change, and the pressures on the health sector to keep up.

“There are good reasons why change at times must be cautious, but we’ve seen during the pandemic that change can — and at times, must — be sped up.”

Kishore said the team will be working directly with people and organisations in health, technology, research and policy to drive action off the back of the report.

The Director of the RMIT-Cisco Health Transformation Lab, Nithya Solomon, said that with new technologies hitting the market on a daily basis, the health sector can be left uncertain of what technologies could make the most impact and how to take the next step.

“This report does the heavy lifting for the health sector, prioritising important technological trends and offering short-term actions to pave the way for further — and, perhaps, faster — transformation,” Solomon said.

“It covers a range of areas in which organisations and government can work towards integrating transformative technologies, from training skilled workers, to funding, to building secure data infrastructure, to building a digitisation roadmap.”

The report will be presented at the Singapore NIIN Health Alliance Summit 2024 in October, which will bring together digital health thought leaders from across the region.

Image credit: iStock.com/mathisworks