There are big expectations for the potential of Smart Health Technologies to support healthcare. This type of technology is still in its infancy, but Smart Health Technologies are expected to be commonplace in the future. However, further research and development is needed, e.g. to ensure the accuracy of data.

There are many opportunities for companies to develop Smart Health Technology solutions that will support the healthcare sector, e.g. within telemedicine and early detection. However, there are also definite barriers, e.g. the infrastructure and competencies needed to incorporate Smart Health Technologies in daily operations. Advice for companies includes ensuring data security and using global open standards, and much more.

The term ‘Smart Health Technology’ combines the term ‘Smart Technology’ with health, i.e. smart technologies used for health purposes. Smart Health Technologies is capable of recording health information from increasingly advanced sensors, storing and computing this information automatically and deliver either personalised advice or automated actions from the collected data. As such, Smart Health Technologies are at least in part physical, and can include the means to interact and engage with data by way of e.g. Virtual or Augmented Reality as well as other forms of data representation.

Smart Technology is an umbrella term covering all forms of technologies which have

1. Physical sensors with which to register data from its surroundings
2. Computational capacity with which to store and analyse the data
3. The means to deliver either actionable advice tailored to the end-user or automated actions, based on the data input.

Smart Health Technology adheres to the above definition, with the clause that it is used with the purpose of, or within the domain of health.

WHAT ARE SMART HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES?

Smart Health Technologies are believed to cause drastic changes over a short period of time as well as provide an opportunity of incorporating both health data from private citizens through wearable technologies and smart health data from within the hospitals. This latter aspect will give rise to intelligent operations and maintenance. Hal Wolf argues that not only wearables, but also sensors and robotics will be available for remote monitoring by 2025.

According to Niall McDonagh, Smart Health Technologies cover a variety of solution types. In hospitals they can be e.g.:

• Sensors
• Medicine dispensation
• Smart pills
• Smart surgeries
• Holographic devices/simulation

Beyond the hospital sphere they can be e.g.:

• Wearables
• Early registration devices
• Remote technologies (McDonagh, 2017)

While Data Analytics enable IT-systems to deliver tailored advice based on advanced analysis, the analysis will only ever be as good as the collected data. With recent advances in the development of health technology, we are seeing pervasive technology within healthcare which empowers citizens, patients and healthcare personnel as well as the operations of the healthcare system in general. Smart Health Technologies are able to obtain and engage with various kinds of data related to personal health and wellbeing.

The trend of recording especially personal health information has been steadily growing for several years with the notion of the Quantified Self. This movement has seen a steep increase in recent years as the rising abilities of IT and decreasing costs has made a wide variety of Health Technology available at an ever lower cost. The current state of Smart Health Technologies is advanced but still in its relative infancy. It will combine and grow alongside Data Analytics.

WHY ARE SMART HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES RELEVANT?

Smart Health Technologies are influenced by the megatrends of democratisation, urbanisation, change in healthcare burden and individualization, amongst others, while the trends of acceleration and technological advances enable Smart Health Technology solutions, along with Data Analytics.

In relation to the burning platform created by the megatrend demographic shifts, the advances of technology have already been adopted to assist in providing care and wellbeing for persons in need for several decades. The demographic shifts are expected to be a driver for the development of Smart Health Technologies. The types of Smart Health solutions will depend on the needs presented by this change.

Source: path2025