Existing Unsolved Healthcare Opportunities
Background
We also see articles on the internet ( eg: reels, or videos etc.), which state how AI/GenAI have the ability to do our jobs. This is a great future view but there is a LOT before we get there. For instance, we have articles on driverless cars, self-check-out counters amd few clinical applications. It took a while for people to adopt these technologies but now it is getting better.
Healthcare lacks resoruces and patients don’t get the timely treatment. The impact being that it might be too late for the patients. In the last 25 years, we have had multiple epidemics - In 2025, COVID was the last known epidemic that started in 2020. The lack of not having a robust software infrastructure is a massive crash i.e. something what we observed during COVID.
What healthcare opportunities exist that we need to get on immediately?
There are so many unsolved healthcare opportunities that would hugely set us up for the future. These are just 5!
Single patient record- Lack of a single patient record leads to not understanding the patient completely, especially if they have multiple disease states. For instance, let us assume the patient has diabetes and hypertension. The GP has a different record of the patient as opposed to the diabetologist. Thereby, both doctors don’t know the patient completely. Here again, you don’t need AI but clean data.
Booking appointments with the clinic/hospital/lab etc. Today we have tools like Calendly wherein the patient can set time up with the physician/nurse/etc. without engaging with organization’s staff. This will enable patients to reach out to the organization if they hsve issues prior to the patient’s next appointment. You don’t need AI here but just updated calenders on both sides. Their staff can be used for so many other important tasks. Perhaps, you will know if you have correct number of staff. For example - With inefficient workflows, with 5 staff can serve 100 patients weekly. But, maybe with efficent workflows, with 5 staff can serve maybe 125 patients weekly. It is both profitable and hsve a better patient experience.
Interoperability Many times, if the physicians has not been able to successfully treat the patient and want to transfer the patient record to another physician internally or externally. It will make life easy for everyone! Users want to use one system to treat their patients and get their information. Using multiple systems will only slow down the user. That’s where it is important to design your architecture smartly (eg: UX, API platform services, micro UIs). Reducing the number of clicks will help the user to coach more patients. You might not need AI for this.
Automated outreach Currently, we have our customer support team call patients for various scenarios. Couple of these can be automated. For example, if you want to remind the patient to take their pills on the 1st day of therapy, then you can text or email them. This job doesn’t require AI but provides an excellent experience to all users. The customer support team can provide custom advice to patients, if the automated advice doesn’t help.
Insurance i.e. payers Even before COVID, there were incentives (provided by payers) for various types of providers to coach patients. It is a huge challenge for their organizations to come up with the documentation for the payer to provide proof of usage.
Final Thoughts Clean data is the foundation of AI. Of course, in future, we will have more cases, where AI can be used for these opportunities. Some countries have public healthcare and others don’t. Unless doctors and patients are closer, we will not be prepared for treating patients effectively and timely. More over, if unfortunately, there is a pandemic in the future, then we cannnot start building our infrastructure at the time. Make hay while the sun shines!