Looking At The Future Of Healthcare

The future of our world may not look quite like something out of The Jetsons, but as science and technology continue to rapidly advance, the next ten, twenty, fifty and so on years show a great deal of promise for improvement in our world. One of the areas that modern society will see vast improvements in is in the healthcare industry – a critical part of keeping people healthy, and a widely debated topic as far as how it should be managed and financed.

An Ongoing Problem With The Healthcare Industry

Whether or not something like ‘robot doctors’ (straight out of a terrible sci-fi movie, to be sure) is an integral part of the hospital experience at some point in the future, the healthcare industry will always need working capital to finance a variety of expenditures like equipment acquisition, hiring and paying medical professionals, constructing new buildings and facilities, stocking medicine, and so forth.

This is actually a problem for many healthcare providers because, with expansion and sweeping changes in the industry, they have to wait longer and longer to receive payments from both patients and third-party payers. As such, these companies are often experiencing a turnaround time of 45 to 90 days on their claims receivable, thus restricting the growth of their healthcare business. Fortunately, The Commercial Finance Group offers receivables financing solutions for the healthcare industry that alleviates these cash flow problems. Our healthcare accounts receivable financing options have proven to work as an effective cash flow solution. Overcome your cash flow obstacles and find your bridge to bankability by getting in touch with our receivables financing solutions today!

Preventative Medicine Will Skyrocket

Cash flow isn’t the only thing that’s going to improve in health – people will, too! As information from a massive amount of electronic medical records becomes available in the cloud, this means that healthcare tasks are moving online. The digitization of diagnoses has implications for predictive and preventative medicine. For instance, by registering slight increases in temperature or detecting the early symptoms of a virus, sensors will make it easy for people to take care of themselves before they get sick. So, certain things that once necessitated a doctor will be able to be taken care of by someone who knows their body better than anyone else – you!

That being said, this technology is in the early stages and needs entrepreneurs to develop its full potential.

Healthcare Will Become More Personalized

Are you familiar with the “Internet Of Things?” This vast network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances and other hardware embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity enable these objects to connect and exchange data. Essentially, this complex but interconnected network is enhancing global communication like never before, resulting in benefits for the future of personalized healthcare. By connecting more devices, this network can support predictive medicine and products that link a patient’s wellness to their lifestyle, transitioning from what was once a technological luxury to a medical standard. As data becomes more accessible and devices become more intelligent, entrepreneurs are uniquely positioned to connect new technology to the patient experience.

An Increased Presence Of Automated Technology

By ‘automated technology,’ do we mean robots? Yes, but don’t be scared, because this isn’t the movie I, Robot. With the development of predictive data solutions, we’ll eventually see the creation of devices and robots that can complete health care tasks entirely on their own. Sure, it won’t be anything like complex surgeries, but necessary tasks like checking vitals will be within the competency of these futuristic medical assistants.

In fact, some prototypes are already functioning in select hospitals around the United States. For instance, Eve, a robot built by the company Aethon, is programmed to deliver vital samples and supplies at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. What’s really neat is that these type of robots are entirely autonomous, requiring little to no oversight for day-to-day tasks.

Doctors Will Have Access To More Data

For decades, physicians have been using computers and other high-tech devices which have been improving the efficiency and understanding of health care. As data becomes more readily available, extensive, and personalized, it will revolutionize the way that doctors diagnose disease and treat their patients. With the help of access to more data than ever before, developing real-life technology inspired from fictional shows like Star Trek is actually possible, and we’re not joking about it.

The X Prize Foundation, led by Dr. Peter Diamandis, is an innovation organization offering a $10 million award to the first team who can deliver a working “tricorder.” The tricorder is the handheld diagnostic device used by medical officers in Star Trek in order to detect diseases early on. Sure enough, Diamandis has predicted that a team will be able to succeed in this endeavor within the next five years – again, no joke here.

An Increase In Goal-Based Healthcare

The largest U.S. health insurer, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has set out a tri-fold goal for the health of the U.S. population: better care for individuals, better health for the population, and lower costs in order to achieve these things. As healthcare transitions to more of a patient-centered model, this prompts medical professionals to be more respectful and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values, ensuring that patient values guide or at least influence all clinical decisions.

Attention to patient-centered measures and outcomes will be particularly important in the coming years as CMS moves closer toward linking health care provider’s reimbursement to their performance on selected measures. So, it is certain that there will be more of an emphasis on genuine patient improvement in a mental and physical sense as opposed to just a physical sense. The word ‘wellbeing’ comes to mind as an increasingly relevant aspect of the healthcare industry’s future.

Using Apps To Self-Diagnose And Treat

Using a simple mobile application won’t actually solve much in a physiological sense, but it can lead people in the right direction if they feel like something’s not right. Now, useful websites like WebMD have led to a number of problems with people falsely diagnosing themselves, leading to hasty doctor visits and unnecessary anxiety. Still, the fact that we can pull out our phone and get more context about what’s going on with our body in mere seconds is rather astounding. As healthcare evolves over time, the accuracy and scope of relevant medical information will only get better.

Financing The Future Of Healthcare

The Commercial Finance Group isn’t full of any doctors, but we help make the important work that doctors and medical professionals do on a daily basis possible with our healthcare receivables financing, working capital solutions and other ways to fix cash flow problems for your healthcare business. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us healthcare business lenders here.