Healthcare organisations must embrace advances in artificial intelligence (AI), digital ecosystems and other technologies, according to a report by Accenture.
Presented at the annual America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo in Austin, the report, entitled as Accenture Digital Health Technology Vision 2017, pointed out that adoption of technologies are key to empower consumer experiences and scale health expertise to meet changing demand.
Also Read: Global healthcare IT market forecast revealed
A recent report from Markets and Markets estimates that the global healthcare IT market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.9 percent during 2016-2021.
The majority of the demand for healthcare IT solutions is driven by the growing need to reduce healthcare costs while adhering to the regulator requirements set by government organisations for ensuring safety, security and confidentiality of patient.
Accenture report says that the role of AI in healthcare is growing rapidly. Today’s AI-powered machines can perform triage to augment clinician decision-making, serve as advisors toward an optimal outcome, suggest options based on user behavior or patterns, and even orchestrate tasks across multiple channels to achieve desired outcomes.
Emphasizing its growing importance of AI, more than four-fifths (84 percent) of healthcare executives surveyed as part of the research believe that AI will revolutionize the way they gain information from and interact with consumers, and nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of health organizations surveyed are already using virtual assistants to create better customer interactions.
Another survey shows a different picture. Findings of a Salesforce survey revealed that AI in healthcare is an area of both optimism and concern among baby boomers and millennials.
When asked about currently available AI-related healthcare apps, baby boomers (28%) were significantly less likely than millennials (63%) to agree that they are interested in a digital assistant like Siri or Alexa recommending personalized healthy habits, HITconsultant.com reported citing Salesforece report.
But the overall picture for AI in healthcare is bright. According to a report from Research and Markets, the overall AI in healthcare market was valued at $667.1 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $7,988.8 million by 2022, at a CAGR of 52.68 percent between 2017 and 2022.
Another thing Accenture notified in its report is that healthcare organisations need to adopt a rich and robust portfolio of digital partners to compete with future business ecosystems.
Accenture’s research found that two-thirds (66 percent) of health organizations are taking steps to participate in digital ecosystems, 90 percent of health executives believe it is critical to adopt a platform-based business model, and more than three-quarters (78 percent) of the executives believe that competitive advantage will be determined by the strength of the partners and ecosystems they choose.
