Experts across BCG and BCG X talk about the trends and opportunities that lie ahead for the digital health care market.
Key Takeaways
Experts across BCG and BCG X foresee an exciting year of technology advances in areas such as at-home care, women’s health, and mental well-being.
- Wearable and at-home devices, virtual hospital wards, and remote diagnostics are just some of the tools that will transform the ability of physicians to meet patients where they are.
- Data-driven companies will lead the way in women’s health with the ability to offer integrated, end-to-end care pathways.
- More specialized mental health and well-being solutions will emerge as health professionals increasingly acknowledge the importance of this area and use digital tools to address it.
- GenAI will play a growing role in areas as diverse as drug development, consumer billing, and cost improvement, potentially having a profound transformational impact on the industry.
We have seen a big push into the digital health care and technology space over the past year as companies continue to evolve solutions and support for patients and physicians. And the digitization and automation of health care systems is offering tremendous potential for improvement in health outcomes.
In 2023, when we identified the trends that would define digital health in the year ahead, we predicted that the area of women’s health would attract significant attention, investment, and innovation. This has proved to be the case, and great progress continues to be made. We also projected steady advancements in mental health in 2023, anticipating the way that digital tools are now helping to bridge care gaps, expand access, enable more personalized treatment, and eliminate geographic barriers—offering more options to those seeking care. We predicted a greater focus on costs as well, an emphasis that is ongoing, particularly with the growing ability of AI and other digital technologies to improve efficiency across every area of the industry.
Perhaps most important, our 2023 report foresaw great strides in the health care industry’s work with GenAI, which had already been tested in developing therapeutic ideas, analyzing medical data, and identifying patterns. In recent months, we have also seen GenAI adding a vast array of new sources to the data landscape available to health care companies due to its ability to process unstructured data. Several medtech players have announced their efforts in the field of AI infrastructure. And emerging GenAI use cases now exist in all health care segments.
The Future of Digital Health
The Future of Digital Health
Not surprisingly, then, our experts see GenAI playing an even bigger role in health care in 2024 and potentially having a profound transformational impact on the industry. It may play a part in aspects as diverse as health care R&D (advancing drug development); consumer billing (reducing medical costs at the click of a button); and other efficiency, productivity, and cost improvements—all leading one expert to call the next digital evolution “the AI era.”
As we look forward to 2024, these and other trends discussed a year ago have continued to gain traction, even as new developments have appeared on the horizon. In this latest edition of The Future of Digital Health, experts across BCG and BCG X—BCG’s tech build and design unit—offer the most exciting developments they foresee in the coming year.
Our experts expect new digital tools to enhance productivity in the health care arena, allowing companies to interact more directly with patients and clinicians, reducing software and marketing costs, and boosting efficiency by eliminating manual, time-consuming tasks. They also predict that leaders in women’s health—and in particular FemTech—over the coming year will be the data-driven health care companies that are able to offer an integrated, end-to-end care pathway for women.
In addition, our experts foresee ongoing momentum around alternative health care models that meet consumers where they are. Wearable and at-home smart medical devices will become increasingly prevalent, particularly for managing chronic conditions and postoperative care. Virtual hospital wards will facilitate the continuous monitoring of patients—primarily through wearable devices—reducing the necessity for in-person hospital visits. Telehealth will offer not only virtual consultations but also remote diagnostics, and may include the use of AI to analyze symptoms and enable at-home lab tests and the real-time monitoring of vital signs. Finally, these innovations will boost patient autonomy, empowering patients to more actively manage their own care and become dynamic participants in the conversation with providers, specialists, and care coordinators.
These and other predictions are detailed below in the projections of our global team of experts. The evolution of digital health has never been more thrilling.