Often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the development of the Internet, AI, robotics, and blockchain digitally connected the entire world, improved communication, and negatively impacted human jobs and the environment.
We are now entering the Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR), marked by the symbiosis of humans and machines, not just through collaboration but also mutual well-being of all stakeholders. This means bringing together advanced technology, human creativity, and ethical considerations to build a more sustainable and inclusive future.
The 5IR will impact every sector and alter everyone’s lives not unlike the previous industrial revolutions, but perhaps the sector that will be most impacted, advanced, and improved is healthcare delivery.
Healthcare spending in the U.S. is $4.5 trillion
In America, everyone will move through a hospital at some point in their lives, maybe at the beginning, maybe at the end. In fact, the average American visits a doctor four times per year and in 2022 total admissions in all U.S. hospitals reached 33.7M. That’s nearly 10% of the entire population.
The fact is that healthcare spending in the U.S. has only increased year over year, tripling from $1.4 trillion in 2000 to $4.5 trillion in 2022. That’s roughly $13,493 per person and 17.3% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, nearly twice as much as the average Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country.
However, despite the increase in spend and number of annual admissions, hospitals’ operating margins are in steep decline. Inpatient care delivery is too costly. There are many factors contributing to this, including higher interest rates, 20% increase in labor costs, and inefficient processes. In 2022, the median operating margin for U.S. hospitals was a loss of 3.8% and the average operating margin was a loss of 13.5%.
So what accounts for these operating losses? In an industry that touches every American and delivers inpatient care to nearly 10% of the population each year? The answer to these questions is at the core of this new, Fifth Industrial Revolution.
Healthcare delivery operations are disjointed, fragmented, and chaotic. For anyone who has had an extended wait time or needed to transfer health records or had miscommunications or poor coordination with providers – you already know how broken our care delivery systems are. It’s not only costing hospitals money but it’s sacrificing the quality of care nationwide. This is a growing predicament and soon to be a disaster.
At the crux of this crisis is data. Hospitals are not utilizing the wealth of data in their care delivery operations. Their data is siloed, inaccessible, and certainly not leveraged to make improvements or increase efficiency. But that’s where the 5IR comes into play. A solution has arrived.
Transforming vast amounts of data in ways never before possible
Now, finally, we have reached a point with artificial intelligence and emerging technologies where we can not only manage the previously unwieldy amounts of data that hospitals have, but also analyze and transform that data into actionable insights that drive real change.
Imagine collecting real-time location data of patients, staff, and equipment across an entire healthcare system and compiling that big data into a single, AI-powered platform. With a complete, holistic view of the entire operational workflow, healthcare delivery could not only be improved – it could be optimized.
And this optimization goes well beyond what we can currently envision. Sure, some manual tasks can be automated and workflows will be made more efficient. But analyzing data at this size will reveal opportunities we never thought possible. Our AI collaborators will give us answers to questions we never thought to ask. And all of it can be delivered in a concise, conversational output that is easy to understand and quick to take action upon.
For example, your newly optimized care delivery system may recommend you reduce your active rental fleet of IV pumps because it recognizes that your utilization level is only 40% and through new workflow efficiencies you can get your utilization up to 80% and resultantly eliminate half of your IV pump rentals. Or perhaps it recognizes that incidents of workplace violence most often occur at the nursing station, far from the security guard’s positioning at the entrance, and can recommend repositioning or increasing security personnel. Perhaps it’s as simple as a gentle audio or haptic nudge to nurses to hit the hand sanitizer on their way into a patient’s new room, which the data proves to reduce Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIs) and readmission rates by 20%. There are countless examples and use cases like these.
Care delivery is about to completely transform. The new capability to collect and analyze the vast wealth of data that moves through health systems each and every day is truly revolutionary. It’s like harnessing the wind. Until now, we are all just rowing kayaks upstream, wasting resources, money, and time. But with integrated AI that can capture and leverage big data like the mainsail of a tall ship, we can not only save time and energy, but also, in the case of care delivery: improve the quality of care, cut costs, and achieve better patient outcomes in a sector that touches the lives of every single American.
Here’s to the Fifth Industrial Revolution. Here’s to the future of healthcare delivery.
