Several technologies are set to reshape healthcare in the coming years, improving patient care and satisfaction while reducing costs or creating new value for healthcare organisations.
The six we see as most influential are:
- Telehealth — remote consultations and monitoring that bring care closer to the patient.
- Artificial intelligence — from image analysis to decision support.
- 3D printing — patient-specific devices, implants and surgical guides.
- Augmented and virtual reality — training, surgical planning and rehabilitation.
- Wearable health monitors — continuous data outside the hospital.
- Next-generation sequencing — the basis of increasingly personalised medicine.
Much of their potential is still to be realised. For manufacturers, each of them also brings new regulatory questions — software as a medical device, custom-made devices, data and cybersecurity — that are best addressed early, at the design stage.