AMSTERDAM — With European healthcare systems facing staffing crises and the traditional social contract of health funding under threat, insurers and pharmaceutical companies are using digital solutions to take healthcare into their own hands, developers and investors told participants here at the HLTH Europe 2024 conference, which ran from June 17 to 20.
Digital technologies are poised to play a large role in supporting disease prevention strategies, which could ease some of the burden on healthcare systems. It's expected that the combination of these devices with artificial intelligence and computer modeling will allow practitioners to identify diseases earlier and predict how far along the disease pathway a person might be.
But digital start-up and innovation companies are now turning away from the burdened and largely risk-averse public healthcare sector for funding and support. Instead, they are increasingly working with insurance and pharmaceutical companies wanting to engage with the public and be the ones bridging current healthcare sector gaps.
Pharma Enthusiasm for Digital Tech
Marie Reger, cofounder of femfeel, medigital GmbH, described her surprise at the level of response her company received from the pharmaceutical industry when they were looking for a partner for their digital hub aimed at women going through the perimenopause.
One driver for that enthusiastic response, she explained, is that pharmaceutical companies "are aware about the increasing importance of patient care beyond medication."
Reger said pharmaceutical companies realize that, in order to play a significant role in the sector in the future, it will be key to ensure continuity of care despite time shortages among healthcare professionals. This means that the pharmaceutical industry "should start thinking beyond the pill" and "about taking care of the patients themselves," she explained.
"Digital health is a significant driver for such patient care pathways," she added.
According to Reger, the pharmaceutical sector is aiming to build "digital ecosystems" that combine their pharmaceutical offerings with digital technologies and nutritional medicine.
Insurance Jumps on Digital Tech Bandwagon
Insurance companies are also recognizing the potential of digital technologies.
"Insurance has changed a lot over the last 10 years," said Filippo Maria Stefania, venture capital manager at the insurance group Generali. He explained that the "traditional image" of insurers is that they're the guys that pay us back when we're in an accident or undergo a medical procedure.
Now they are shifting toward prevention, with the aim of ensuring that policyholders don't have an accident or a cardiovascular event in the first place. This would help close what is known as the "insurance gap": when the insurance policies that people can afford to buy can't cover the projected cost of the treatments and interventions they will eventually need.
But prevention isn't an easy fix. Beyond the motivated few, many patients don't have the drive to change their behaviors and improve their health outcomes later down the line.
Geoff McCleary, Connected Health Lead at Capgemini, a French multinational information technology services and consulting company, asked: "Where's that point in the continuum where you can tip them into a better behavior or a better outcome, without having to manage the whole process from end-to-end?"
"I think that's part of the power of digital but also part of the challenge."
Stefania explained that insurers are aiming to use digital technologies to encourage healthier lifestyles through incentives.
This relies on increasing the number of "touch points" between the insurer and the policyholder beyond the mere making of a claim. More interaction via wearable technologies, for example, will give insurers a better idea of how likely someone is to develop a disease in the future. They can then apply a system of incentives, such as decreasing premiums or offering discounts on smart watches, for example, to those who stick with a healthy lifestyle with the aim of preventing that disease from developing in the first place.
The Power of Screening
Even more can be achieved by integrating digital health when screening is placed firmly at the center of healthcare efforts, explained Andrew Lacy, CEO of Prenuvo, Inc.
"If we're able to, together with other companies, create a world where we catch most things early, everything downstream of that is going to change because we spend so much money on reactive medicine," he said.
Lacy wonders what would happen if conditions could be avoided altogether through screening. "What would a healthcare system look like? What types of pharma drugs would be interesting to develop and invest in? How would we think about insurance? Everything downstream changes, and that's the world that we're working to create."