We all recognize that digital technologies are firmly embedded in our lives – the Internet of Things is becoming a reality, growing from 15 billion smart devices in 2015 to at least 50 billion by 2020. It is easier than ever before to connect data-generating appliances, machines and even complete industries to the internet. As a result, we are also creating vast amounts of data, faster and more detailed than ever before – 90% of all data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.
This big data revolution has led to the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is about combining connected devices with cloud computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence – our critical infrastructures will become smart.
Addressing the needs of a growing, aging world population
So how can this revolution help us all to address some of the big challenges we are facing in healthcare? The world’s population is growing and aging – by 2020 , for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. Poor diet and sedentary behaviour have led to an increase in obesity and lifestyle-related disease and a huge rise in chronic medical conditions. Heart disease, cancers, respiratory disease and diabetes are now killing 31 million people a year according to the World Health Organization. Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control – according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, global health spend is rising an average 5.2% per year and is set to bust $9 trillion by 2018. This is simply unsustainable.
If we are to ensure that healthcare remains affordable and widely available for future generations, we need to radically rethink how we provide and manage it – in collaboration with key health system partners – and apply the technology that can help achieve these changes. And this will play out in the merging of the consumer and professional healthcare spaces.
Health-conscious consumers are already comfortable using apps to track and take more control of their personal health, while governments are looking for ways to deliver better and more affordable healthcare beyond the hospital walls. They want to prevent diseases by encouraging healthy living, and support people with chronic diseases at home. Healthcare professionals are seeking ways to cooperate more effectively and deliver first-time-right diagnoses and targeted treatments.
Creating an interconnected health continuum
Thanks to the digital and big data revolution, we can start to do what was previously unthinkable – to improve patient outcomes and lower healthcare costs, while delivering personalized care to each individual.
Today, over 275 million hospital patients are monitored by Philips equipment annually, nearly a billion people in emerging markets have access to our diagnostic imaging, and we manage 18 petabytes of imaging data for healthcare providers.
Starting from this solid base, our vision is of an interconnected health continuum where the healthcare and consumer worlds integrate to put people at the heart of a holistic system that monitors them continuously and provides answers at every stage of life – from helping babies feed safely, ensuring food is cooked nutritiously, and aiding people to take responsibility for their own health – right the way through to world-beating hospital treatment and home care. It’s going to make a big difference to all our lives, and it’s something we’re immensely excited about.
Empowering people through integrated solutions
At Philips we are realizing this vision by thinking beyond individual products and towards harnessing the power of integrated solutions – a combination of hardware, software, and services that Philips innovates with our partners and customers to solve a particular problem.
As an enabling platform, we’ve built a cloud service – our HealthSuite digital platform – designed to safely and securely bring together data from a multitude of devices healthcare systems and customers, connecting individual, clinical and research data. It enables to better understand, identify and treat diseases sooner, design more efficient and effective treatment workflows, and shape solutions to address population health issues at scale.
Healthcare continues to move outside the hospital, and into our homes and everyday lives. With leading doctors and psychologists, for example, we’ve developed personal health programs designed around patients to catalyze sustainable behavioural change. Through a combination of connected health measurement devices, app-based personalized programs and secure, cloud-based data analysis, we empower people to take better care of their health.
And starting in 2013, we collaborated with Banner Health in the US to create the Intensive Ambulatory Care (IAC) program, treating patients with complex chronic conditions – the top 5% who account for 50% of healthcare spend. Through this at-home telehealth program, patients are monitored from their homes and cared for remotely by multi-disciplinary teams of professionals. Within six months, this program had reduced hospitalization rates, hospital stay length, and professional and outpatient services so much that the cost of care was reduced by 27%.
Our strong opinion is not only that prevention is better than any cure, but that integrated, digital connected healthcare systems will give millions more people the opportunity to live healthy lives, with better prevention, quicker diagnoses, shorter hospital stays, better outcomes, longer independent living, and lower healthcare costs.
Radically rethinking healthcare together
This vision of an interconnected health continuum demands a behavior change from the industry, including us. It demands that we tear up the old rules about how businesses work. The healthcare industry is fragmented – that cannot continue.
We need to look beyond healthcare to learn from other industries. We need to ensure the privacy and security of healthcare data, but at the same time enable it to be shared among the right people and used to build new solutions. We need to radically rethink how we partner and how we share risk. We need to move from transactional relationships to relationships where we all work together as part of an ecosystem – it’s about co-creation with start-ups, with universities, with other large companies, and with patients and customers. With this shared responsibility to enable value-based healthcare comes a shared opportunity to shape the future of our world.
Why Practice Social Distancing?
Amidst this lockdown, many are still asking the question about “Social Distancing”. As per the scientists, finding the cure or medicine for COVID-19 it may take about 12-18 months to find it. Hence. To prevent the spreading of this virus social distancing is the most effective way to do it.
Let's start by explaining what is social distancing, it is a conscious and deliberate choice of maintaining the distance of six feet from the people around us, to prevent the spreading of COVID-19.
To understand better the impact of it, here is a small visual to explain how the virus will spread if social distancing is not paid attention.
Social distancing is so effective right now that as an individual we all are contributing in the prevention of spreading this deadly virus.
There is another major concern that is coming into the picture with the rapid increase in the coronavirus patients. Hospitals around the world do not have enough resources to tackle this pandemic, there are limited numbers of healthcare facility in all the countries around the world.
The coronavirus outbreak in Italy has shown, the faster rate of the population getting infected by it and to tackle with it, there are not enough medical resources like hospital beds, ventilators and doctors. This will be challenging for the healthcare to save lives leading to exponential rise in number of deaths.
Hence, social distancing is the most effective way to "flatten the curve" or reduce the spread of this coronavirus.
What does flattening the curve means?
The researchers have projected a graph to understand the impact of the spreading of coronavirus against the number of hospital beds. Though this is a theoretical graph, it does show how quickly the capacity of healthcare can come crashing down which can make COVID-19 an epidemic, hard to deal with.
This curve indicates, if the same number of people are getting at a slower rate over a longer period of time, then it reduces the pressure on the healthcare system and making it easier to treat everyone, hence, a lesser number of deaths.
Therefore, just by taking small measures individually, like maintaining social distance, washing hands frequently, avoid going out in crowded places, and spend maximum time inside the house. We all can contribute a collective to fight against this deadly coronavirus.