Aging and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, and advances in digital technologies continue to drive health care expenditures.
Non-communicable diseases—most prominently, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes—continue to rise, fueled by urbanization, sedentary lifestyles, changing diets, and rising obesity levels.
Global health care spending is projected to increase at an annual rate of 5.4 percent in 2018-2022, a considerable rise from 2.9 percent in 2013-2017. Aging and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, and exponential advances in innovative, but costly, digital technologies continue to grow health care demand and expenditures. This is according to Deloitte Global’s report, 2019 Global health care outlook: Shaping the future, released today.
“Sedentary lifestyles and fatty, sugar-rich diets leading to rising obesity, diabetes and heart disease levels remain the top public health issues in the GCC and ME” says Abdelhamid Suboh, Consulting Partner and Life Sciences and Healthcare Leader, Deloitte Middle East.
Health care stakeholders—providers, governments, payers, employers, consumers, and other organizations—struggling to manage clinical, operational, and financial challenges envision a future in which new value-based, data-driven care delivery models aided by digital technologies, may help to solve today’s problems and to build a sustainable foundation for affordable, accessible, high-quality health care.
“Making this vision a reality will require a philosophical shift in focus away from a system of sick care, in which we focus only on treating patients after they fall ill, to one of health care, which promotes healthy lifestyle and diets, well-being, prevention and early intervention,” adds Suboh. “To make this shift, today’s health care system will need to partner with other traditional sectors such as education, public and private employers, F&B, social media and transportation to address the social determinants of health, and with new sectors such as retail, banking, and technology to improve data and platform interoperability.”
“Health care’s evolution will have far-reaching impacts as new business models emerge that blur boundaries and drive cross-sector and cross-industry convergence,” adds Suboh. “The opportunities to shape the future of health care have never been more promising and abundant, but it will take participation, collaboration, and investment across multiple stakeholders in 2019 and years to come to turn opportunities into realities.”
Key trends explored in Deloitte Global healthcare outlook include:
- Creating financial sustainability in an uncertain health economy: The emergence of personalized medicine, exponential technologies, disruptive competitors, expanded delivery sites, and revamped payment models is adding uncertainty into the global health economy and increasing the urgency for organizations to remain relevant and financially viable. Providers and payers that embrace new business, care delivery, and risk models could offset the disruptive potential of powerful market entrants and emerge as leaders in the new ecosystem of affordable health care solutions.
- Using new care delivery models to improve access and affordability: Aging populations and the rise of non-communicable diseases are driving an industry shift away from curing disease in the short term toward preventing and managing disease and promoting overall well-being in the long term. Health care systems will likely need to innovate and embrace new business, care delivery, and risk models to account for this shift, which could potentially reduce costs, boost quality, and improve access and affordability.
- Adapting to changing consumer needs, demands, and expectations: Standing at the epicenter of the new health care value system will likely be informed and empowered consumers who have high expectations of their health care ecosystem. Organizations that understand and act on how consumers would like to use digital technologies such as wearable monitoring and fitness devices will likely be well-positioned to develop patient engagement strategies that help individuals make informed health care decisions.
- Investing in digital innovation and transformation: Digital innovations such as blockchain, cloud-based computing, virtual health, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, digital reality, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and others are helping reshape the future by making health care delivery more efficient and more accessible. However, adopting many of these innovations requires capabilities that fall beyond the traditional purview of health care organizations. Health care leaders should consider building ecosystems that embrace nontraditional players and sources of knowledge outside their own four walls.
- Maintaining regulatory compliance and cybersecurity: Health care is likely to become more regulated in an increasingly digitized and connected health care environment. Although certain regulatory issues are of universal concern—cybersecurity currently heads the list—it is important for organizations to take a proactive, well-planned, and collaborative approach to compliance, while adopting a systematic approach to protect systems and data from cyber threats.
- Recruiting, developing and retaining top talent: An aging workforce, rising demand for health care services, and reduction in physician working hours are driving shortages of appropriately skilled staff in both developed countries and developing economies.
Healthcare leaders who leverage technology-enabled opportunities to address talent challenges may both solve near-term staff shortfalls and create the building blocks for a sustainable future.
