HealthTech Update: The Latest News, Research & Trends (September 2024)

Recent HealthTech updates in the news have spotlighted some interesting developments, including:

In The News

Wearables

A new feature is coming to a commonly owned and used tech item: the Apple Air Pod. The FDA recently approved the use of hearing software compatible with air pods, allowing users to set up a hearing test freely at home, and receive appropriate hearing settings for their needs.

HealthTech Growth

Physical therapy can get quite boring and tedious, not to mention repetitive. As a result, many patients lose motivation and fall off the exercise bandwagon, losing out on benefits from treatment. Enter CogPT, an AI-enabled healthtech platform for physical therapy patients.

“[it] could address the core domains of cognitive function and support the delivery of holistic patient care through features like in-clinic modality, web-based data portal, admin portal and the companion app.”

The outcome? Higher patient compliance, engagement, and satisfaction scores, while reducing commonly seen boredom and improved patient attendance rates. The side benefit? Higher revenues.

On a global scale, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is partnering with primary care clinics in Malaysia in a push to build a digital health ecosystem that supports patient-centric care, predictive population health, and integrates a proactive approach to health and wellness for the local population.

AI

Google DeepMind has unveiled AlphaProteo, a system that can design novel proteins that successfully bind to target molecules, potentially revolutionizing drug design and disease research. Trained on vast amounts of protein data from the Protein Data Bank and over 100 million predicted structures from AlphaFold, AlphaProteo has learned the intricacies of molecular binding. Given the structure of a target molecule and preferred binding locations, the system generates a candidate protein designed to bind at those specific sites.

Generative AI is becoming a natural sidekick for some in the industry. To quote:

“It’s not perfect. The AI gets us, I don’t know, 80% complete, but our analysts then finalize the script and do so much more quickly than if they were running it or creating it from the beginning”

One pain point in healthcare is miscommunication around scheduling leading to missed appointments, lab testing and the like. One way to use AI to improve upon this is to identify patients with certain medical issues and create automated messaging and communication systems to remind them about upcoming appointments and testing. The system also provides access to educational materials so that patients can remain informed.

Stats

  • 64% of experienced nurses fear that AI will take over their jobs in some capacity.
  • This hospital system integrated AI into nursing EHR and realized a 17% increase in efficiency.
  • $200 billion is the projected market size of the GLP-1 industry by 2031.
  • Race-adjusted algorithms commonly used in healthcare are coming under fire. One example of a UTI calculator accurately predicts UTIs in young black children only 82% of the time, leading to delayed care and often undesired consequences.
  • 26%: the reduction in unanticipated in-hospital deaths at a Canadian hospital due to the use of AI-enabled tech CHARTWatch
  • $291,200, the potential savings for a 5-physician primary care clinic that uses AI to help with electronic health record note-taking.

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Sanjana Vig, MD, MBA
Sanjana Vig MD, MBA
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