A bold vision for the future of healthcare: Unlocking the full potential of data and predictive technologies – Philips MD

MedTech News: The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in the Australian healthcare system and highlighted that it is not sustainable in its current form.

In an interview with Health Industry Hub, Matt Moran, Managing Director of Philips Australia & New Zealand, discussed the key themes from the Future Health Index report and the top priorities identified by today’s healthcare leaders who are decision makers or influencers within hospitals and healthcare facilities in Australia.

Importantly, 81% of Australian healthcare leaders have made investments in artificial intelligence (AI) a priority showing a significant mindset shift in the last couple of years.

Matt said “AI’s key benefit is bringing large amounts of data, crunching it together and coming up with meaningful insights… Predictive technologies and AI have the ability to touch on areas that healthcare providers are working on. So bringing it all together and understanding how the technology can benefit is key… Productivity and patient outcomes are going to be an absolutely critical outcome down the road and healthcare leaders are certainly on the right track from what the report is telling us now.”

Although around 50% of healthcare leaders said they are using data across both clinical and operational settings, they are facing key barriers in unlocking the full potential of data across their organisation and the broader healthcare system.

Matt added “It’s good to see the shift in attitudes from ‘we’re going to have robots doing our jobs’ to ‘this can really integrate into our daily life and free us up to spend time on what is most important’.

“Key barriers are around integration, interoperability and infrastructure. Three quarters of the healthcare providers see the silos are hindering them and the lack of interoperability and being able to pull it all together to help develop insights is still bothering them. What’s a little bit more worrying is that it’s significantly above the global average in Australia.

“I think what we really need to get to is having that interoperability, but also having that secure data – the privacy is an absolutely critical thing that needs to be taken into account.”

Lastly, Matt shared his perspective on the bold actions that need to be taken by policy makers, healthcare leaders and medtech industry leaders to reimagine the future of healthcare in Australia.