HLTH 2023 was a whirlwind of discussions and keynotes, covering both buzzy topics like generative AI and ever-present issues like patient data security. More than anything else, however, we saw the patient centered as the future of healthcare innovation.

Below, we’ll break down the top themes from the event with our own insights:

• Clinical trials and depth of access
• Remote healthcare post-Covid
• Patient data and the rise of AI
• Health equity within underserved communities
• Patient empowerment
• Patient engagement

Let’s dive in.

Running theme: Access and efficiency

Our discussions often came back to a core issue in healthcare tech: improving existing processes and finding ways to navigate and simplify a complex data ecosystem.

Clinical trials and depth of access

Again and again, we heard the same thing from those in the eCOA space: 

“We want to bring clinical trials to participants — not wait for them to come to us.”

Expanded access to clinical trials continues to be a motivator and struggle for players in the eCOA space.

Breadth of access — reaching participants across geographies, in areas both rural and well-connected — wasn’t the only issue. Depth of access is increasing in importance. But what does “depth of access” look like?

• Smart devices powering patient diaries that are discreet, simple to use, and provide a high-quality patient experience within the app. Long gone are the days when analog diaries sufficed. Even consumer devices are unreliable data collectors, with failure points across connectivity, app performance, and more.
• Wi-Fi connectivity backed up by reliable SIMs (ideally with multi-carrier connectivity) to ensure data points move from patients to sponsors without a hitch.
• Access to clinicians and hospitals for telehealth check-ins, monitoring, and continuing care, a system often complicated by accessibility issues, medical deserts, and fragmented data systems.

Depth of clinical trial access is a concern we’re familiar with at Mason. Our partners in the eCOA space have addressed depth of access and more by fully customizing the patient experience on Mason OS, supported by always-on connectivity and globally certified devices.

Remote healthcare post-Covid

The post-Covid telehealth landscape is a true Wild West when it comes to the lack of regulation and explosion of startups and new companies competing within the space. Born out of necessity, the telehealth boom evaded typical processes and now companies and the government are left to puzzle together a cohesive, safe, reliable experience for patients.

The direction remains murky: as regulatory bodies like the FDA inevitably catch up, what does that mean for remote healthcare? How might businesses have to adapt and change to stay compliant? And how does the unpredictable global economy play in?

There are no easy answers, but we heard the same refrain around what companies need to weather the remote-healthcare storm:

• Operational efficiencies: Reducing complexity across operations is a core tactic in keeping cost and unpredictability at bay. Fewer points of friction mean fewer points of failure and more future-proofed products.
• Reliable technologies: With many uncertainties, the need for reliable, scalable technologies remains high. Cohesive data systems, connectivity, and long-lasting devices are controllable factors in a sea of variables.
• True partnerships versus vendor relationships: Telehealth companies want partners they can innovate with, who are invested and along for the ride as they deal with unexpected change.

Patient data and the rise of AI

Patient data is always the undercurrent of any conversation around healthcare technologies. With the surge of interest in generative AI, concerns around patient data loom large: AI diagnostic tools are the talk of the town, but what does this mean at an algorithmic level? Accurately training an AI requires the use of real patient data and outcomes, opening a Pandora’s box of questions around ethics, data privacy, and the danger of removing power from providers while also seeking to serve more patients in less time.

There’s also the question of AI’s Achilles heel — accuracy. The stakes for a misdiagnosis are incalculable within the healthcare field, and we already know that any inaccuracies or biases present in the training data will pollute AI-generated results. Extreme caution with AI-powered diagnostic tools was a running theme at HLTH 2023, with the importance of human review stressed repeatedly.

However, AI has found a comfortable niche when it comes to operational efficiency in healthcare. The usage of AI models to augment staffing and serve more patients quickly and effectively is compelling. Mason’s platform complements this use case well — end-to-end remote control over device fleets and over-the-air updates remove the manual processes that interrupt and delay patient experiences.

Running theme: Patient-centric solutions

Patient-centric solutions were another recurrent theme in our conversations at HLTH 2023. The move away from holistic approaches to targeted, data-driven ones that focus more on specific demographics came through loud and strong. Companies in the healthcare space are looking for partners and vendors that emphasize the patient and their needs.

The days of the sponsor-focused mindset at large organizations is giving way to smaller players and companies laser-focused on providing specific, innovative, targeted services to help them modernize — especially across support, operations, and logistics, which are often years behind.

Health equity within underserved communities

Achieving health equity in underserved communities was a major concern at this year’s conference. Patients exist everywhere there are people. Cities and rural communities around the world, single-family homes and apartments, nursing homes and shelters — the array of experience and accessibility for patients is vast.

Clinical trials

For those in the eCOA space, the issue of trial access is compounded by lack of health equity across populations. If a trial participant has limited access to the Internet or no reliable spaces to charge patient diaries, they’re both more likely to churn from a trial and valuable data is lost. There are compounding implications for this across clinical trials. How can you innovate around the most pressing issues for a population when your data is inconsistent or nonexistent?

RPM & medical devices

In remote patient monitoring and medical devices, the gap in health equity grows. Population health data that excludes core demographics of the population — such as the elderly or the unhoused — mean that those demographics have reduced impact on the data that shapes public health, medical treatments, and much more. Individuals who can neither travel easily nor access telehealth go without healthcare, more often than not. 

It’s a human problem, but there are technological solutions: here at Mason, our partners in healthcare and secured facilities build highly secure, optimized patient experiences on top of our customizable Mason OS, serving their apps on devices that stay in the field for 5+ years and keep patient data continuously flowing with connectivity that spans Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and all three major data carriers.

Patient empowerment

Patients deserve to develop their own narrative. That was the strong opinion of many healthcare industry professionals at HLTH 2023, from executives to innovators and beyond. Anyone who has ever tried to access their own patient data knows the pain of tracking down the long list of providers and specialists who have served you over the years, moving between disparate EHR and EMR systems, analog and digital data capture, data lost to time, and more. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

The ability to be truly proactive in your own health is a game changer. For years, healthcare has been largely reactive, but the advent and popularity of remote patient monitoring allows patients to harness the power of their data and communicate their care.

There’s an opportunity within the healthcare tech space for a uniting element that removes the barriers for patients to access their own data — data they should own before anyone else. That problem is yet to be solved, though we envision that a unified platform acting as a data hub between systems, facilities, and patients is a strong answer.

Patient engagement

Patient engagement is the key to success with any RPM or eCOA initiative. Keeping patients interacting with healthcare software is make-or-break for anyone in this industry. Unfortunately, there are myriad issues that impact patient engagement:

• Unsupported or end-of-life consumer devices require time and effort to replace, from reaching out to support to physically shipping and receiving devices to replacement device provisioning.
• Core software updates, often required and unpredictable, are an annoyance for most users and an obstacle for many without accessibility accommodations.
• Poor user experience on consumer devices repurposed as enterprise healthcare devices can be frustrating for patients and trial participants.
• Inconsistent peripheral pairing means important biometric data is lost and patients may be too frustrated to bother troubleshooting, simply dropping out of studies or accepting lost health data for connected medical devices.

Lapsing data logs and churned trial participants can severely impact the reach, retention, and data integrity of a clinical trial. RPM patients face poorer outcomes when their health data fails to record and transfer to providers.

Patient engagement is a tough nut to crack, but a consistent, reliable user experience plays a huge part in mitigating the risks. Our partners across healthcare have seen success in this area by building a deeply customized experience for their apps on Mason OS, specifying every aspect of the patient experience via 500+ configurations.

Device reliability and life cycle is another core contributing factor to patient engagement (or lack thereof). It’s a simple equation: the less often devices require replacement, the more likely they are to stay at a patient’s side for the duration of a clinical trial or monitoring period. Enterprise-ready devices with extra-long life cycles of 5+ years — like our own Mason hardware — solves for the constant churn-and-burn of consumer devices in a simple and straightforward way.

A patient-first future is in sight

Based on our time at HLTH 2023, we’re confident that a patient-first future is coming in healthcare, one that emphasizes the human experience above everything else. It’s a hopeful direction, though not one without its challenges — challenges that we’re primed to tackle here at Mason every day.

Want to learn more? We’d love to hear about where you’re at and how we can help.