The construction of smart hospitals is the focus of the development of public hospitals in recent years, and the depth of understanding of the word "wisdom" by hospital managers directly determines the future development pattern of hospitals.
From 2024 onwards, there are 7 major directions for the development of future hospitals.
01|Digital development trend: The "data + algorithm + service" model will bring about an innovation ecosystem, and the industrial role based on data + needs to be supplemented and improved.
02|Future trend of smart hospitals: The development of hospitals from "informatization" to "digital intelligence" is accelerating, and the underlying data is gradually improving.
03|The future trend of clinical digitalization: Establish standards and establish an intelligent and diversified business model with the participation of multiple actors.
04|The development trend of digital pharmaceutical marketing: We will make efforts from the patient, doctor, and pharmacy side at the same time to create a closed loop of data and achieve precision marketing.
05|AI Pharmaceutical Development Trend: More and more AI computing pharmaceutical companies are moving from services to biotech based on independent R&D pipelines.
06|The development trend of artificial intelligence medical imaging: industry norms are being established, and the future product commercial space will be explored to services and full-course management.
07|The development trend of the medical metaverse: establish a connection between the real and virtual worlds, and finally realize the medical metaverse, which will generate huge value.
There is still a lot of room for development in the future
As a form of business, Internet medical care is originally the product of the combination of medical reform and technological progress. The pace of national healthcare reform will not stop, and Internet technology continues to advance, so opportunities will inevitably emerge.
In other words, the key to the survival and development of Internet medical enterprises is to help promote industry reform with technological innovation and business model innovation and strive to enjoy the dividends of a new round of medical reform.
So, what is the new round of industry change?
Looking back on the past few years, there are some keywords that cannot be ignored, such as medical anti-corruption, three-medical linkage, DRGS DIP, drug volume procurement, medical alliance medical community, family doctor contract, etc.
Stringing these keywords together, in fact, we can see the focus of the next stage of industry reform: medical insurance cost control.
Theoretically, the problem facing medical reform around the world is the same, which is nothing more than constantly balancing and rebalancing the cost, efficiency, and quality of medical care. It's a game of pressing the gourd and scooping, and there's no perfect solution.
Our country's choice at this stage is to find ways to ensure the health of the medical insurance fund pool to cope with the large amount of diagnosis and treatment costs caused by factors such as the aging population.
Therefore, we have seen that the state is vigorously promoting the "Sanming model", although the industry has mixed opinions about this model, and some people even joke that it is "forcibly using backward production relations to pull down productivity." But at present, it seems that the Sanming model is the trend of the times, and there is only one reason: it really saves money for medical insurance.
The National Health Insurance Bureau's strong approach of checking back three years and deducting doctors' medical insurance points also confirms that "medical insurance cost control" will be the main theme of reform in the new era.
In my opinion, there are three directions that are worth further exploration.
Direction 1: Be the best cost control assistant.
Although medical insurance cost control is the general direction, medical care has never been a simple mathematical problem, how to effectively control the cost under the premise of not greatly affecting the quality of medical care, is easier said than done.
One path is to take the technical route to help the health insurance bureau establish a more complete rule engine to more efficiently investigate and deal with fraud, abuse, waste (FWA) and other behaviors in the medical insurance reimbursement process, and enterprises will get a certain percentage of rewards from saving medical insurance funds as commercial returns.
This model itself is not new, but the development of AI technology may create new value points, such as more efficient and accurate review, and more detailed reasons for automatic chargeback generation for each chargeback case.
The other path is to take the operation route to help ** implement some business ideas and operate them, form a replicable city or regional template, and can directly or indirectly reflect the effectiveness of medical insurance cost control.
Under this model, it may be difficult for companies to get incentives from the saved medical insurance funds, and a more realistic return may come from exchanging a franchise for a certain business with the local government, such as value-added health management services for patients with chronic diseases in community hospitals.
From the perspective of medical insurance cost control, it is definitely the most economical model to make residents healthier and not to let minor diseases evolve into major diseases, that is, the so-called shift from "first-class-centered" to health-centered. At present, the most suitable people to undertake this task are the grassroots community health service centers and family doctors.
Direction 2: Be the city's HMO.
Under the logic of cost control, it is difficult for us to bypass the imported product of managed care, so the health maintenance organization HMO has become the development direction of many enterprises, and everyone envisions that they can become China's United Health.
About 10 years ago, when I was working on a consulting project for Ping An, I was helping them build the framework for HMOs. In fact, the closest to United Health to date is indeed Ping An Health, because compared with other Internet medical companies, Ping An Health has the natural advantages of insurance companies, and its business logic is closer to that of United Health.
For a long time, there have been two important obstacles to doing HMO in China: one is that the core medical resources are not in the hands of commercial insurance companies, and the other is that residents' awareness and dependence on commercial insurance are not as high as those of Americans.
After the medical insurance cost control is further strengthened, the medical experience of the urban middle-class group will inevitably be reduced, such as prescribing drugs with medical insurance status in tertiary hospitals, and only centralized procurement drugs can be prescribed. At the same time, the promotion of the Sanming model may also stimulate some experts to jump ship to a certain extent, driving the development of high-end private medical institutions.
Under the superposition of these factors, we have reason to believe that commercial insurance has the opportunity to usher in a round of rapid development, which will naturally promote the improvement of China's version of HMO.
After the acquisition of Peking University Healthcare, Ping An Health has also made up for the shortcomings of core medical resources to a certain extent, and companies that are interested in entering this field and have the strength to establish an offline medical network may wish to maintain a long-term observation of Ping An Health's business.
Of course, WeDoctor can also be included in the scope of long-term observation. However, at present, WeDoctor's grassroots health community does not have the blessing of core medical resources, and it can only be a cooperative relationship with commercial insurance, so it may be difficult to attract customers and promote business under the traditional HMO model, and a more innovative WeDoctor model needs to be established.
Another point to note is that United Health is not a to C style of play, but to B. In other words, if there is a bigger adjustment in national policies one day, such as mandating companies with more than 25 employees to purchase supplementary commercial insurance for employees, then HMO will probably really enter the fast lane.
Direction 3: Be a medical planner for residents.
The underlying logic is that after the control of medical insurance costs becomes more stringent, residents' medical treatment will become a technical task to a certain extent
In addition, the original platform that mainly does escort business is also suitable for adding this new business and improving its business layout before and after diagnosis.
The above three directions are some thoughts looking forward to 2024, welcome to send private messages**. It boils down to one sentence: Internet medical care, from the change, to the change.
In the future, the development trend of the smart medical industry will be:
In the new era, the demand for smart medical services is growing rapidly, and the global smart medical market is booming driven by new medical models such as telemedicine, mobile medicine, and Internet medicine. The smart healthcare market is expected to grow from $178.4 billion in 2021 to $373 billion in 2026, at a compound annual growth rate of 159%。Behind this trend is the urgent need and active exploration of digital transformation in the global healthcare industry.
part 01.Disease** transforms health management
The scope of medical services has expanded from simple illness** to full-cycle services such as health management, disease prevention, and nursing. Realize the whole process operation mode of "early prevention, early detection, and early detection". Through information technology, smart hospitals provide patients with personalized health management solutions, realize the prevention and control of diseases, and promote the transformation of the global medical industry from a disease-focused operation model to a "prevention-first" operation model empowered by wisdom.
part 02.High-quality clinical outcomes
The quality of medical services has been severely affected due to problems such as medical errors and over-treatment. Through the introduction of advanced information technology and intelligent equipment, smart hospitals have improved the accuracy and efficiency of clinical diagnosis and treatment, reduced the occurrence of medical errors and excessive medical treatment, and improved the quality and safety of medical services.
part 03.Digital intelligence in clinical trials
Decentralized clinical trials (DCT) rely on clinical trial management platforms and remote communication to greatly reduce the burden of clinical trials on subjects, enabling clinical research to increase efficiency and reduce costs. In addition, the demand for the development of digital intelligence in clinical trials is increasing day by day, and on the premise of maintaining patient safety, data quality, and research continuity, compliance and feasibility are maintained, and refined management is achieved through diversified intelligent cost control methods to cope with the increasing global medical expenditure.
part 04.Personalized, customized health services
As competition in the healthcare market intensifies, hospitals need to continuously expand their service offerings and improve their service quality to meet the diverse needs of patients. Through the deep integration of information technology with other medical service providers (such as family doctors, clinics, pharmacies, ** centers, etc.), smart hospitals have formed an interdependent ecosystem to provide patients with humanized, personalized and customized health services.
Against this backdrop, home mHealth care is being widely promoted in Japan, while Singapore is using virtual reality to enhance neurosurgery training capabilities.
part 05.Interconnection of medical data and information
Break the information island, promote the homogeneous distribution of medical resources, and provide important support for clinical diagnosis and treatment decisions. The deep integration of digital technology will further improve the quality of medical services and the efficiency of decision-making, for example, the application of artificial intelligence technology to assist pathological diagnosis in the United States has achieved remarkable results.
part 06.Using AI for drug discovery
Drug discovery technology is also undergoing upgrades. Cutting-edge technologies have injected new technology drivers into pharmaceutical R&D, investment in AI pharmaceuticals continues to grow, and R&D pipelines are showing accelerated growth. The deep integration of AI deep learning algorithms with the whole process of drug R&D effectively shortens the R&D cycle, reduces the cost of trial and error, and improves the success rate of R&D.
part 07.Refined expense management
Refined expense management is an inevitable trend in smart hospitals. With the continuous growth of medical expenditure, how to effectively control medical costs has become the focus of attention of countries** and medical institutions. Through information technology, smart hospitals have realized the refined management of medical resources, improved the utilization efficiency of medical resources, and effectively controlled medical costs.
In short, with the rapid development and in-depth application of new generation digital technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, smart healthcare, as an emerging field in the modern medical industry, is opening a new chapter in future development.
These trends not only reflect the future development direction of the medical industry, but also bring more intelligent, efficient and convenient medical services to patients. However, to achieve these trends, there are many challenges that need to be overcome, such as technical difficulties, data security issues, and policy and regulatory constraints. Therefore, we need to continue to explore and innovate to promote the sustainable development of smart hospitals and make greater contributions to the cause of human health.