New Digital Era of Healthcare And Wellness
Google Trends has shown that search queries related to “telemedicine” have surged drastically since January of 2020, but what does it mean for the healthcare sector? What is the future of “telemedicine”? How will it influence the health and wellness industry at a greater scale?
The covid-triggered digital transformation in the healthcare sector
Digital transformation has been such an unstoppable trend in most industries in the past decade, but it was not that prevalent in the healthcare sector, especially for the customer experience side of the business – not until COVID-19 came along.
Since COVID-19 disrupted many aspects of our daily lives and further steered the future of the business world, it also created the opportunity where consumer behaviours changed faster than ever. Now, digital transformation is happening in most industries, and it has finally reached the healthcare sector as well.
Before COVID-19, because of the nature of the sector being limited to physical on-site service, digital transformation of the customer experience was slow. The major obstacle was the regulations of medical practice, data privacy, and high implementation cost with limited users of telemedicine.
Now that quarantine and lockdown are adopted as the common measures to contain the coronavirus, there have been regulatory changes in some countries to allow a certain level of flexibility in telemedicine. In addition, worrying about Covid-19 transmission, people are much more willing to use telemedicine.
How is telemedicine reshaping healthcare?
The biggest digital transformation trend is certainly telemedicine. New numbers have come in and shown that the market of telemedicine is estimated to grow from $49,898.9 million in 2019 to $194,054.4 million in 2023 at a rate of 40.4%. Another survey indicated that the volume of telemedicine use is now 38 times more than the pre-covid situation. More importantly, the trend seems to have stabilized.
Some people predicted that telemedicine would take the dominant position in the sector and strategized with this thought in mind. However, with the vaccine deployed successfully, healthcare may still have return to being delivered face to face – at least partially.
What will be different is that an irreversible change has been made in the sector and that a digital-enabled environment is ready for future healthcare. The biggest question for companies to think about is –
“How can your service or product fall into the big picture of future healthcare where consumers could swiftly switch between physical care and telemedicine?”
The impact on the health and wellness industry
With the arrival of digital era of the sector, not only did hospitals try to incorporate telemedicine in their healthcare service, but also, start-up companies saw the opportunity and joined the battlefield of telemedicine, like 98point6, Maven, Pluscare.
More importantly, being part of the health and wellness industry, telemedicine also unlocked more possibilities for other sectors. A more holistic and personalized customer experience of wellness can be achieved, for example, in combination with fitness, health wearables/monitors, nutrition, and mindfulness. A few examples here are Calm (a meditation app), Garmin (smart wearables for sports and outdoor activity), Ōura Ring (sleep and activity tracking rings), Healbe (calorie intake and body hydration tracking wearables), and several brands of personal-use ECG monitors.
When life returns to normal, the industry will get even more complex with its service delivery being either physical, virtual, or somewhere in between. The volatility and complexity may be overwhelming and even trouble many companies, and those who manage to harness the power of it will get ahead of the game.
Power of Digital Intelligence Service
It’s no surprise that the digital footprint of consumers will be central in doing business in the digital era of the healthcare sector, but still, data across various digital channels are overwhelming, especially when companies don’t have access to data of websites other than their own, which is the limitation of Google Analytics.
ADK Insights provides Digital Intelligence Services which can help companies better understand how consumers visit millions of websites over time, including websites of their competitors in the same industry and online retailers (market places) – which may enhance and build upon the analysis you may have from Google Analytics.
More importantly, by providing both quantitative data, like web traffic, and qualitative data, like what people talk about on social media, Digital Intelligence Services are able to help you define and improve CX, UX and customer journey touchpoints.
At ADK Insights, we constantly follow trends in the health and wellness industry to provide timely consumer insights and prepare companies for the future. If you would like to exchange thoughts or you’re curious about our Digital Intelligence Services, please contact Nimrod, Dam or Rob at ADK Insights.