How the Healthcare Industry Will Evolve in the Coming Years






We are at a critical point in the history of healthcare, where old technologies are beginning to fail but new ones are rapidly entering the market. One thing that can be said with certainty is that healthcare in 20 years’ time will not look the same as it does today. Some of the diseases we have most feared – cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia – will be much easier to treat than they are today, but new diseases will emerge that pose a serious theat. The industry is gearing itself up for the challenge.


The developing threat from disease


There have always been people working in medicine whose job it is to monitor the emergence of new diseases around the world, but their job has never been more urgent. As people have begun to travel around the globe more frequently, diseases have begun to spread more easily. Of particular concern is flu, which may often be thought of as a minor affliction but which killed 50 to 100 million people in 1918. Annual vaccinations are available for the vulnerable, and researchers believe they are close to finding a way of attacking the core of the flu organism rather than the parts that mutate, but it’s a race against time.


Alongside this, medicine faces another serious challenge. Over-use of antibiotics, especially in agriculture, means that common diseases are evolving to become immune to them and they are losing their effectiveness. This isn’t a big deal for the average healthy person in day-to-day life, but it could place elderly and chronically ill people at serious risk, and could make chemotherapy and surgery of all kinds much more dangerous than it is today. Researchers are working hard to try to develop new ones before it’s too late.


New moves in medical research


With all this going on, researchers are under serious pressure, and politicians and business experts are looking for better ways of funding their work. Recently, a new fund has been launched that will provide an immediate reward for any company succeeding in bringing a new antibiotic to the market, helping to cover the financial risks involved in developing lots of drugs that may or may not prove to be effective when they reach the testing stage.


Researchers are also working hard to find new ways of tackling mental illness, which affects at least 10 million Americans and can increase the risk of problems such as heart disease and stroke.


Technology and the healthcare business


Part of what is driving advancement both within the research industry and in day-to-day medical practice is the development of parallel technologies. These include things such as software to identify at-risk patients more easily and streamline preventative measures, and low-cost portable devices that members of the public can use to monitor their own health. Innovators and investors such as Marcia Radosevich have been at the forefront of this, identifying areas where technological development is needed and helping to bring the two industries together. To find out more about her work look at Marcia Radosevich online, and you can learn more about how Radosevich has funded several start-ups focused on building partnerships of this kind and enabling medicine to reach its goals more easily.


A healthier society


Alongside all these technological changes, there are social changes that have the potential to make the population healthier. Everyone knows that they should aim to eat healthier food and get more exercise, but it can take social change to actualize this – for instance, community groups organizing sports events or campaigning to preserve space for exercise and play within the urban environment. Similarly, businesses are beginning to get organized around the health of their workers, realizing that they are more productive overall if they take action to reduce stress in the workplace so that staff need fewer sick days. Health has never been such a big priority, and actions such as these can help to keep people in shape to face the healthcare challenges of the future.



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