5 Digital Experts Predict What's Next in Healthcare Transformation

While some pharma marketers are figuring out new digital strategies to implement in 2017, there are some that are ahead of the pack.

In fact, these experts were even nominated for the 2017 class of Top 40 Healthcare Transformers. as per MM&M.

What changes should we expect in the digital health space?

According to Robert Wachter, M.D, Professor and Chair, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, "As more hospitals merge and consolidate into health systems and share EHRs, very different medical staffs need to come together to agree on things like formularies and clinical decision support. When each hospital had its own EHR, it could decide these things for itself. Now, the linking of computers is beginning to force a degree of systemness and standardization that will challenge many multisite organizations."

Unity Stoakes, Co-Founder and President, Startup Health, however, is focusing on the rising billions.

"...new healthcare market opportunities in emerging markets with billions of news customers and significantly different business and care delivery models," he adds.

"Even though the U.S. is the biggest healthcare market in the world --- spending about $3 trillion a year --- there's a much bigger global opportunity as billions of new customers enter the healthcare market."

Greg Cohen, Associate Director, Global Strategic Marketing, of UCB, Greg Cohen, notes that "In Web 1.0, patients flocked to the internet because they could find information that helped balance the asymmetric patient-physician relationship in ways that benefited both parties.... social networks changed the way information was created, categorized, and discovered. As a result, patients were able to connect with each other at incredible scale with specialized communities for any given disease."

As we move into Web 3.0, Cohen adds that "the world of connective and predictive intelligence — patients will no longer seek out all the information on their condition; they will look for just the right information, personalized to their situation. Patients need to be able to trust the information is credible and accurate. And while a part of the next wave will be highly technical, the complementary part will be highly human. They will want to engage with healthcare professionals in more frequent, yet shorter interactions, balancing the technical with the personable."

For the complete list of influencers and thought-leadership, please head over to our media partner MM & M.

Greg Cohen and Unity Stoakes (photographed from right above) are also featured in our exclusive ePharma whitepaper, The Future of Digital Health: Technological Advancements That Will Impact the Pharmaceutical Industry, providing more insight on the future of digital health.

Make sure to download your copy to learn more about what they had to say.

(This article was originally published on January 31, 2017)