Healthcare in need of innovation: exponential technology and biomedical entrepreneurship as solution providers (Keynote Paper)

Abstract

There are significant challenges in global healthcare delivery at the moment. Some countries have abundant services, but are stuck with a rather nimble and expensive system that focuses on incremental innovations. Other geographies are still in need of basic tools, infrastructure and require completely different, inexpensive, and with that more disruptive solutions to satisfy their healthcare needs.Next Generation Healthcare systems with a focus on prevention / early detection and pro-active therapy will employ exponential technologies (AI, Big Data, Blockchain, Sensor Technology, Synthetic Biology, Tissue Engineering, Robotics, 3D Printing, ...) that will surely lead to significant changes in the way we experience, think about, and deliver healthcare and in which a digitally empowered patient will play a more important role.In the coming years/decades we will experience a shift from the current SICK-CARE provision to real HEALTHCARE to a focus on personal HEALTH, supported by an integration of patient generated health data with other external diagnostic and therapeutic data components creating a digital health twin as a base for prevention and patient centered precision medicine.Education and training of Biomedical Engineers needs to be adjusted to these developments focussing on solving unmet clinical needs, which requires a solid understanding of current health problems (regional, global), future technologies, economic realities and global health markets.The paper will present and discuss some of these future global innovation needs and the subsequent need for a change in the biomedical engineering curriculum that needs to include learning-(creativity, critical thinking, collaboration) and life skills (flexibility, leadership, social), as well as basic economic and entrepreneurial training -all of which are currently not taught or emphasized.

HealthTEC Innovation Design - a proposal for a novel Master degree program based on Unmet Clinical Need, global Healthcare Challenges, and 21st century skills

“…The HTID-MRes has the potential to educate future health innovators that follow the I3-EME formula, of IDENTIFYING clinical problems, INVENT / IDEATE solutions, iterate them and subsequently IMPLEMENT them by using the expertise of Engineers, Medical stakeholders, and Economists (see Figure 2). [11]…”

How do we need to adapt Biomedical Engineering Education for the Health 4.0 challenges?

“…The current approaches to intellectual property rights, reimbursement policies, patient privacy and confidentiality as well as regulatory oversight will have to be redefined and restructured to accommodate the changes personalized medicine will bring to healthcare. [3,6] Genetic data obtained from next-generation sequencing requires computer-intensive data processing and adequate tools will be required to accelerate the adoption of personalized medicine to further fields of medicine, which requires the interdisciplinary cooperation of experts from specific fields of research, such as medicine, clinical oncology, biology, and artificial intelligence.…”

“…technology assessment), this offers opportunities for a remote health system, but places high demands on data management and security. [3,7] Patient empowerment Focuses primarily on people who receive health care services -people with physical and mental health needs. Fast communication, better education and the involvement of the wider public (citizens) in local planning and priority setting are important to get health across all policies and move away from societies that actively market unhealthy lifestyles [8].…”

A Structured Pathway Toward Disruption: A Novel HealthTec Innovation Design Curriculum With Entrepreneurship in Mind

“…This study confirmed that PHE could be the new way to increase resources by facing twenty first-century challenges in public health across several disciplines or sectors aligned with CEPH competencies. Moreover, the need for specific educational programs in life science technology innovation was previously anticipated by Yock et al (23) and (9).…”

“…The current way of training and educating future clinicians, biomedical engineers, health IT, and artificial intelligence (AI) experts in education silos does not lead to disruptions but rather to incremental innovations (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). The necessity for innovative and adaptive approaches to improve outcomes brought us to think about a health innovation related adoption of the Design Thinking Approach; a novel way of problem-solving that aims to find the best fit-solution between the customer profile and a new product/service/process, quickly prototyped, and iteratively refined (11).…”