3. DATA-DRIVEN HEALTHCARE
Healthcare’s big data market is expected to reach nearly $70 billion by 2025, according to Bain, a consultancy firm. As the collection of health data continues to accelerate, its applications become more widespread, and its potential for improving treatment options and patient outcomes skyrockets.
The biggest barrier, however, has been a lack of interoperability: one healthcare organization’s data is not easily transferred to (and easily processed by) another organization. Covid-19 underscored that problem further.
Interoperability took a large step forward in November 2020, when Google Cloud launched its healthcare interoperability readiness program. Aimed at helping payers, providers, and other organizations prepare for the federal government’s interoperability regulations, it gives program participants access to data templates, app blueprints, security tools, and implementation guidelines. If healthcare organizations can get on the same page, the potential of the industry’s big data could quickly turn kinetic.
4. NANOMEDICINE
Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology, the technology that operates on the atomic, molecular, or supramolecular scale.
For something of such a small size, the potential is huge: nanomedicine has applications in imaging, sensing, diagnosis, and delivery through medical devices.
Researchers are finding new ways to use nanomedicine to target individual cells, and in 2021, that research will be put into action. CytImmune Sciences, a leader in cancer nanomedicine, has recently completed a Phase I trial of using gold nanoparticles to target drug delivery to tumors; BlueWillow Biologics, a biopharmaceutical company, has developed nanotech that fights viruses and bacteria.
