Speaker 1: Ahoy everyone, thank you so much for your great recommendations and suggestions about which topics to cover next at The Medical Futurist. As in my last video, I handed over this YouTube channel to you, and you've been sending amazing things to cover. We have been working on those topics, and I thought that in the meantime, I could give you a big summary about where medicine and healthcare are heading in the 21st century. Because on this channel, we always focus on very specific themes and subjects, like how generative AI can contribute to healthcare, what are the most important skills for physicians for the future, or how nanorobots could contribute to medicine. But now, I want to give you a big list of predictions. Eight predictions I firmly stand by, eight high-level trends that we at The Medical Futurist have been identifying as key themes for the near practical future of medicine and healthcare. In the sense that hopefully, it will give you a better idea about where we are heading, and what we can do about that, so you can make better plans for that near future. Let's dive into it. Number one, far the most important prediction, patients will become the point of care. It might not sound as exciting as I think it is, but this is the end of the story we call digital health. Digital health has been a paradigm shift in healthcare, meaning that the ivory tower of medicine has been breaking down, and patients and physicians started becoming members of the same medical team. The end story of this paradigm shift is that patients will become the point of care. Right now, the point of care is a physical location, normally a hospital building, a medical office, a clinical institution, where patients have to go to receive care, or treatments, diagnosis, monitoring. But the end of this paradigm shift is that when patients receive the same, wherever they are, at their homes, in a car, or at a physical, traditional point of care. Of course, there will be ways, like in emergency situations, or when invasive procedures are required, maybe they have to use big radiology machines, when patients will still go to a physical point of care, but otherwise, patients will become the point of care. Number two, healthcare will become globalized. This is mostly due to the global supply chains that we have been benefiting from in the last couple of years. But normally, healthcare was designed in a certain country. If you are part of that country's healthcare system, you would receive care on a level of quality that that country can provide you with. But digital health makes healthcare globalized. Someone from country A can submit, for example, a tissue, a cancerous tissue sample, so-called biopsy, to a country B, because there is a startup doing a business in that country. That startup can sequence the DNA, the genetic background of that cancerous tissue, and maybe they can look for matching clinical trials in a database that is being hosted in country C, and there is a pharma company in country D doing a clinical trial in country E. So there are five countries taking part in the whole process, and what do patients get at the end? When they get into a clinical trial, they receive personalized, state-of-the-art treatment for free. This is how digital health makes healthcare globalized. Number three, remote care is becoming the new norm. The pandemic has had many impacts on all of our lives, but there was one huge impact I want to highlight here, that millions of patients and physicians started to adopt technologies. Before that, we thought that it would take one more decade or so, but out of a must, not a choice, many people had to start using remote care services, because there was no other way of providing or receiving healthcare. This way, now, because of the technological adoption is on the table, only the cultural transformation is lagging behind, but remote care is becoming the new norm. Moreover, remote care can help decarbonize patient pathways and reuse the carbon footprint in general in healthcare. Number four, patient design will determine what hospitals look like. Many pharma companies, medical device companies, and hospitals have been becoming patient-centric in the last decade or so, but patient-centricity is a thing of the past. Because in patient-centricity, patients are passive. Of course, you ask what they think about your product, technology, process, or hospital facility, or building, but whether you include their opinions in the final design, it's your decision, not theirs, so patients are passive in the process. Patient design means that patients are involved on the highest level of decision-making. Like in this Dutch hospital, patients had a say to make sure that the things they want to have in the hospital room will be included in the final design, for example, a round table and not a work desk, or a designated space in the room where a physician can examine the patient, instead of just using the whole room for keeping the hierarchical relationship between physicians and patients. Instead of that, let's keep it as eco-partnership-like as possible. Number five, technology giants will join the healthcare ecosystem. A few years ago, it seemed to be a bit weird that technology companies wanted to start providing medical devices and healthcare services, but now, seeing how Amazon, Google, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, NVIDIA have been marching into healthcare, it seems clear that they have a place, they can become a stakeholder in the healthcare ecosystem, because these companies have an amazing track record at producing and developing technological products and services people actually want to use, and let's be honest, healthcare and pharma companies are not so great at that. So I see huge collaborations, we even published papers about this, between technology companies and established healthcare pharma ventures. Number six, the cultural transformation of digital health changes the roles of physicians and patients. The role of the physician used to be being a keyholder to the ivory tower of medicine. Now, physicians are becoming sort of guides for their patients in the jungle of digital and health information in general. The patient's role used to be a passive role, waiting for a symptom to appear and only after that ask for medical help. Now they are becoming proactive, empowered patients when they want to become very much engaged in their own care, because of course, it's about their own health and disease management. And as the roles are changing, all of us, all the stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem must understand how to work together in this new status quo. Number seven, access to data makes healthcare personalized. Healthcare is for all. Healthcare provides services and products and technological solutions, treatments for the masses. But we are quite different. If you look into our metabolic, molecular, genetic background, if you look into what kind of lifestyle insights we try to embrace every day, what kind of genes we inherited from our parents, all these things are different. So we, in many cases, very much need different kinds of treatments or diagnostic procedures. It's only possible to fine-tune healthcare services this way, if we have access to data. And do you know how it has become possible? Through the range of digital health technologies that reached the markets in the last couple of years. With digital health technologies, devices, smartwatches, health sensors, portable connected devices, at-home lab tests, direct-to-consumer genetic testing services, with all these, can finally obtain data. Data that can be used to fine-tune the healthcare experience. If I'm genetically prone to a side effect, you should know about that as a physician. Just like how tech companies have been fine-tuning the user experience for you on your smartphone or by using search engines and other services, healthcare could fine-tune the experience for us by accessing the obtained health and vital sign data we can get access to through a range of digital health technologies. And number eight, new medical teams arise. The first paradigm shift we call digital health will end up creating a new medical team. A medical team consisting of medical professionals, like in the last 2,000 years, and patients. This is unprecedented and I think the biggest milestone in the history of medicine. And in the next paradigm shift that's quite imminent because of the rise of artificial intelligence, we will see a new member joining that medical team already consisting of physicians and patients. A technological entity. Artificial intelligence. I can only imagine what kind of major challenges this change in the medical team will bring to us. I hope I could help you get a crystal clear image about the near future of medicine and healthcare with these eight high-level predictions. If not, please tell me what I missed and what kind of other topics you would like to hear more about. Cheers. If you like this video, please subscribe below to get notified about every single new video we come up with. And also, please go to medicalfuturist.thinkific.com where you will find our two courses, the digital health course and our newest one, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Healthcare. See you there.