healthcare

Last week, GeekWire reported unexpected news: Amazon will be shutting down its Care initiative, according to an internal memo which indicates that it is not “the right long-term solution for [Amazon’s] enterprise customers.” Per the memo, Neil Lindsay, Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President, explains that “Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term…”

Undoubtedly, Amazon Care was revolutionary in concept and was poised to become one of the most beloved disruptors in healthcare. The company was aiming to not only streamline a massive virtual care offering, but also provide way for in-person clinical services. In addition, with Amazon’s recent acquisition of One Medical, healthcare pundits were excited to see the potential transformation that the company would effectuate in the industry. Now, with this surprising news of Amazon Care shutting down, these same pundits are asking the question—is healthcare really that hard to disrupt?

Notably, this is not Amazon’s first time changing course on one of its healthcare projects. In 2018, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase collaborated to form a new venture named Haven, with a goal of disrupting care. However, just 3 years after Haven was started, its respective leaders decided that it was time to disband the company, as tackling healthcare would likely require a different approach.
Indeed, if these three globally renowned companies were not able to successfully tackle issues in healthcare, what hope is left for other players? One central conundrum with healthcare that makes it so challenging to disrupt, especially in the United States, is how siloed it has become. Any innovator or policymaker that wants to create change has to deal with so many different angles, including insurance companies, pharmaceutical developers, private hospitals, public healthcare entities, private clinics, individual physicians and other clinicians, and ultimately and most importantly, patients.

Without a doubt, healthcare is a tough nut to crack. For example, over the last 5 years, innovators have pored over artificial intelligence with the hope that it can disrupt healthcare across a variety of subsectors, including care delivery, research, diagnostics, and even treatment plans. However, many healthcare enthusiasts are disappointed in AI’s lack of traction, as much work still needs to be done to perfect the technology and make it mainstream.
There have been some successful ventures, however. Digital health and the inculcation of technology within healthcare in general has definitely progressed significantly. I’ve written in the past about various aspects of healthcare innovation, including the use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and other advanced computing tools within the realm of care delivery. These aspects indeed seem like worthwhile endeavors in bettering care and patient outcomes.

Assuredly, healthcare has proven to be an extremely challenging industry to meaningfully disrupt. However, while many areas still require more work and investment to perfect, there are other aspects which have flourished and have truly improved patient care. Innovators and leaders must continue their efforts on this front without getting discouraged, as this will be the only way to ensure a better future ahead.

The metaverse has significant potential to disrupt traditional healthcare delivery in the long term, according to a recent Accenture report. While it will likely take time for providers to begin building their own digital environments in the metaverse, healthcare leaders said they believe metaverse technologies will have a positive impact on healthcare.

The metaverse — a domain of the internet in which users immerse themselves in interactive digital environments — has significant potential to disrupt traditional healthcare delivery in the long term, according to a recent report from Accenture.

For the report, Accenture surveyed 391 healthcare executives across 10 countries. More than 80% of them said they believe the metaverse will have a positive effect on the healthcare industry.
The metaverse has two primary functions, according to Kaveh Safavi, senior managing director at Accenture Health. The first is the “Internet of Place,” which refers to spaces in the metaverse that will virtually transport users to almost any world they can imagine. Safavi said that this could one day allow people to easily interact with clinicians, peers and enterprises at a distance.

The second is Web3 or the “Internet of Ownership.” Web3 is an evolving term that the report used to describe the utilization of technologies like blockchain and tokenization to build a more distributed data layer into the internet, allowing data to be owned and validated by metaverse users. Healthcare organizations could shift part of their operations to the metaverse and maintain their own internal virtual environments, Safavi said. This will allow employees to work from anywhere and collaborate based on data that they can authenticate.

“The greatest value of the metaverse in healthcare will depend on the ways in which the ‘Internet of Place’ and the ‘Internet of Ownership’ converge with one another,” Safavi said. “In combination, the two have the power to eliminate the distrust, friction and fragmentation that patients and healthcare workers experience as they cross platforms, care settings and work environments.”

Safavi does not know when the future he described will become a reality, but he said there are practical ways in which he can foresee providers adopting the metaverse. For example, if a physician notices one of their patients is recovering slowly from a basic laparoscopic surgery, they can take their concern to the metaverse and watch a previous abdominal surgery this patient had. The physician can then show the patient the video when explaining that their slow healing time is the result of the scar tissue that formed during the previous surgery.
The patient can also continue to heal in the metaverse after their discharge. For example, their physical therapist can demonstrate exercises in an immersive setting, such as an environment simulating a beach, and they can fast forward to the future to show the patient how they will be moving in six week’s time.

If healthcare companies or health systems want to jump into the metaverse, Safavi said they must ensure they have the foundational social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies to build a complete, interactive digital healthcare ecosystem. He also pointed out they must have the right data.

“This is not just about EMR data,” he said. “It’s the full spectrum of data that represents people, physical items and activity. Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations do not have a way to capture data about people and processes.”

Safavi acknowledged the exciting healthcare metaverse applications detailed in the report are unlikely to emerge soon, and a February Rock Health report said the same. It showed that while the metaverse’s integration into healthcare will take time, healthcare leaders are playing the long game and beginning to invest in metaverse technologies — investors funneled $198 million into U.S. startups using virtual or augmented reality for healthcare in 2021, up from $93 million in 2020.

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Meaningful Healthcare Disruption has Become A Huge Challenge

Healthcare leaders are optimistic about metaverse disruption, report says