Embracing the Future: A 2024 Outlook on Healthcare and Technology Trends 

As the calendar turns to 2024, so too does the ever-evolving landscape of technology-led innovation, especially across healthcare. The coming year promises groundbreaking advancements intertwined with unique challenges. The journey forward is marked by the rapid progression of Gen AI, a resurgence of Digital Health, the rise of Extended Reality (XR) in medicine, and the transformative potential of Direct-to-Patient solutions. These trends, among others, not only will shape the future of healthcare but also demand a reevaluation of customer experiences as well as business and operating models to capture the full benefits. 

Here’s my take on the 9 trends to look for in 2024: 

1. Gen AI Takes Two Steps Forward and One Step Back – Gen AI’s capability will continue to advance at a torrid pace with higher-order tasks like reasoning, math, analytics, multimodal interactions and more coming faster than you could ever imagine. Change management and data/content challenges inside organizations will hinder adoptions, but those that can overcome it will start to separate from the pack. 
2. A Revival Across Digital Health – The digital health solutions focus will shift from pure-play digital therapeutics to digital biomarkers, companion solutions and remote patient monitoring, fueled by the pharmaceutical industry, as brands work to better connect therapies to the broader care journey. 
3. Extended Reality (XR) Finds a Growth Path with Doctors – While Virtual reality has struggled to reach mass adoption, Apple’s Vision Pro release will set a new bar for the Extended Reality experience and propel a new wave of medical use cases including remote surgery, training, collaboration, and digital twins. 
4. Direct-to-Patient Models are Gaining Traction – Consumers expect a consumer like experience when buying things on Amazon or Shopify, healthcare is starting to move this way with Direct-to-Patient solutions that meet rising user expectations. This includes self-diagnosis aids and telehealth solutions to improve time to diagnosis and therapy for more complex conditions such as immunology and rare disease.  
5. Pressure to Transform Life Science Operating Models Is Real – The significant potential of GenAI and growing cost pressures will force life science companies to radically rethink how they operate and commercialize products such as automating their marketing content supply chain or aiding field and patient support reps with AI-sidekicks. Those that fail to move will risk missing the opportunity to capture step-change gains in cost and efficiency. 
6. Patient and HCP Education Will Be Turned Inside Out – With the game-changing content creation, personalization, and conversation capabilities of GenAI, patients and HCPs will have access to their own virtual tutor, enabling unique, multi-model learning journeys for each individual and disease area. 
7. Data Cooperatives will Become Essential to the Next Wave of AI-Driven Innovation – No single company will own all of the data needed to fuel the next wave of discoveries or meet the expectations of personalized omnichannel experiences for HCPs and Patients.  The ability to responsibly share, combine, and analyze data across different assets/owners will be a critical capability. 
8. Retail Care Will Tackle More Complex Conditions – Both physical retail care points like CVS or Walmart and virtual care platforms like Amazon will continue to increase their capabilities aided by AI-enabled physician assistants and/or nurses to handle more complex conditions across a variety of disease categories including neurology, cardio, immunology, and more. The gains in patient accessibility will be massive. 
9. GLP-1 Drugs Will Set a New Bar in Pharma for Consumer-like Healthcare Experiences – Given the range of players participating in this market from pharmaceutical brands to traditional weight management companies, there will be a growing opportunity to integrate lifestyle and healthcare activities to help patients better manage their conditions. 

---

As we stand on the cusp of this transformative era, the convergence of technology and healthcare offers both unparalleled opportunities and intricate challenges. The next chapter in 2024 and beyond will be about the democratization of education and expertise via Gen AI, the essential role of data cooperatives in driving innovation, and the expanding horizons of retail care.  

It’s an exciting time for us all, and success will lie in our ability to adapt, innovate responsibly, and embrace the changing dynamics ahead.