I think there is scope for more AI/data analytics based healthtech startups that can provide better patient health lifecycle management for
- Patients
- Healthcare providers (hospitals/clinics/Drs/nurses/admin/others)
- Partners (insurance/pharma/pharmacy/labs/research/technology/others)
while reducing the pain points like
- Data entry duplication/billing/ insurance/other operational issues
- Access/availability/waiting times for services
- Staff shortages/training
- High cost care, etc
In order to provide a 3600 view to all participants in the patient health lifecycle journey, various aspects need to be considered
- Data preparation (sourcing/cleaning/enriching)
- Will be challenging given different sources/types/formats from different providers/partners and the consequent size
- AI analytics engine for predicting risk based care demand, automating manual tasks/support
- AI algorithms (Deep Learning, NLP, Computer Vision) are getting better/more accurate at various predictive tasks with each iteration
- OpenAI ChatGPT creating huge buzz, using LLM Reinforcement Learning model
- Compute & storage are getting faster & cheaper every year, with increasing demand
- API based system to provide flexible access to data and analytics
- Rules based system to handle HIPAA/privacy/security guidelines to control access for all participants
- Web/mobile dashboard to view/manipulate data easily
- Incentives for all participants to share data and use analytics
The benefit of this approach is that it gives more relevant information to all participants to make better decisions as per their need/outcome
- Patients choosing providers/partners based on skill/cost/availability/other measures
- Ability to share information across providers/partners reduces need to provide entire health history every time
- Providers can focus on providing care by reducing time spent on other activities
- Partners get access to relevant data for making better decisions on future investments in products/services
With the 21st Century Cures Act (https://www.healthit.gov/topic/oncs-cures-act-final-rule ), there is now scope for startups to build products that can enable sharing of data across hospitals/clinics/patients, with the required legal, privacy and security measures as per HIPAA guidelines (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/index.html).
There are some existing startups that have such products but will require more research to get a comprehensive list. A good report from cbinsights on healthtech is ‘The Digital Health 150: The most promising digital health companies of 2022’ – https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/digital-health-startups-redefining-healthcare-2022/.
In the 2021 and 2022 report, the data & analytics group is still small but growing. I think there is scope to do more startups in this area, given the advancement in AI and related technologies and their growing acceptance in healthcare supply chain.
Sharing some useful articles, not comprehensive:
For list of healthcare startups (check if outdated) –
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/healthcare-startups
https://builtin.com/healthcare-technology/healthcare-technology-companies
Interesting articles on data sharing/analytics –
Some general articles on AI in healthcare –
https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2022/12/ai-healthcare-2023-ml-nlp-more-perfcon
Funding –
More articles to follow …
