What digital solutions do hospitals intend to adopt in 2024?

Hospital and health system leaders are under pressure to optimise their approaches to digital health after a lot of hype over the last two years about certain digital solutions. Now most healthcare leaders are sceptical about the value provided by such solutions, especially when it comes to the latest ones.

A report by Panda Health has identified the main solutions being adopted by healthcare organizations in their digital transformation journeys. “The organizations that emerge as leaders in digital transformation in the coming months are those that will make a solid, reliable, and efficient assessment so that they can innovate with confidence and speed,” says Ryan Bengtson, president and chief operating officer of Panda Health.

With a view to helping decision-making associated with digital health, the study gathered responses from 100 hospital and health system leaders in September 2023, listing 16 categories of digital solutions to identify how they are being adopted.

Only four of the categories have been adopted by more than half of those surveyed, but the survey predicts that by the end of 2024 this number will grow to 11 categories. The most commonly adopted digital technologies are cybersecurity and telemedicine, cited by more than 80 percent of the hospitals surveyed. Those reported to have the lowest adoption rates are virtual nursing, hospital at home and digital care chatbots.

Many hospital leaders plan to adopt new digital health solutions by the end of 2024, but adoption can be challenging for many of them. “Prioritising and investing in the right solutions can help address several challenges, such as labour shortages, worsening financial results and higher patient expectations. Trying to invest in every category with so many solutions available will only serve to exacerbate the very challenges that healthcare systems are trying to overcome,” explains Thomas Kiesau, director of innovation at Chartis, a healthcare consultancy. The survey revealed that the top three digital solutions that hospitals are willing to adopt by 2024 are self-service scheduling (growing from 34 percent to 75 percent adoption); digital patient intake (from 31 percent to 70 percent) and patient engagement (from 40 percent to 75 percent).

According to the study, when assessing the overall value of digital health solutions, hospital leaders generally believe that the promised value corresponds to reality, but there are some exceptions. For example, more than a third of those interviewed said that the value attributed to virtual nursing is exaggerated. On the other hand, almost the same percentage said that the value given to cybersecurity and behavioral health solutions is underestimated.

The majority of hospital and health system leaders believe that the return on investment (ROI) of digital health solutions is positive. Of all the technologies evaluated, respondents revealed that self-service scheduling and telemedicine/electronic consultations can generate a high return. The three solutions that they believe do not offer a positive ROI are hospital at home, patient, and employee wellbeing and virtual nursing. Almost two thirds of respondents currently using hospital at home technologies reported that the solution does not guarantee a positive ROI.

The three digital health priorities identified in the survey for the next three years are improved workflow with operational productivity, reduced overheads and better patient outcomes. Still looking to the future, more than 80 per cent of hospital leaders believe that remote patient monitoring and telemedicine will have a positive impact on hospitals and healthcare systems. Virtual nursing and hospital at home, on the other hand, will have less of a positive impact in the future.

More trends for 2024

Forbes recently highlighted the transformative technologies that are expected to impact healthcare in 2024. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to change a lot in the field of medicine, from the way drugs are developed to how patients are treated and test results interpreted.

Other trends will come in the form of chatbots and virtual assistants for both doctors and patients, as well as digital twins that can be used for a simple piece of equipment all the way up to an entire hospital or even organs in the human body.

The Internet of Things (IoT), together with connected wearable devices, can help monitor patients remotely and facilitate the spread of “telemedicine 2.0”, from remote consultations to a holistic approach to remote patient care and treatment. An example of this trend is the virtual ward, a place that centralizes the monitoring of several patients in their own homes.

The use of Virtual Reality in healthcare already has numerous use cases in action, such as the control of chronic pain instead of drug treatment with possible side effects. On the other hand, Augmented Reality (AR) is increasingly being used by surgeons.

3D printing could increasingly be applied on demand to produce surgical instruments, orthopedic or dental prostheses. Research is also underway into 3D-printed organs for transplantation using biological tissue taken from the patient’s body.