Every facet of today’s healthcare sector is changing at breathtaking speed. New innovations are expanding the boundaries of what is technologically possible. The expectations and demands of patients have evolved and are redefining how and where care is delivered. Digitalization and AI are creating extraordinary new challenges – and opportunities. How can providers, healthcare leaders, and policymakers not only respond to such changes but stay one step ahead of them?
Siemens Healthineers has an outstanding combination of expertise and experience, allowing them to see changes like these in a broader perspective, with a sharp understanding of how healthcare policy, technological innovation, medical developments, human capacities, and financial factors intersect. Looking to the future, the company’s thought leaders see three themes that will be of particular relevance in the coming years. First, personalization of care, which can dramatically improve health outcomes. Second, the potential of operational excellence to amplify professional impact and make healthcare more sustainable. And third, that smartly-connected care systems can improve health equity and access.
Every year, Siemens Healthineers delivers a Keynote Address to a global audience of leading physicians, healthcare executives, and industry experts during which they present new ideas and innovations as well as explore the major trends transforming healthcare worldwide. The Siemens Healthineers Shape 2023 Keynote focused on breakthroughs in three crucial areas:
First, the unique challenges posed by cancer. Cancer continues to be one of the world’s leading causes of death, slightly behind cardiovascular diseases resulting in strokes and ischemic heart attacks. Yet unlike heart disease and stroke, where the general trend over the past decades has been in the direction of declining age-adjusted mortality rates, cancer cases continue to climb, particularly for people under the age of 50. A cancer diagnosis is, of course, much more than a statistic. The toll the disease takes on patients and their families is incalculable. And the pressure cancer cases place on our healthcare infrastructure, social services, and communities is immense.
Yet there have been important advances in recent years that are bringing us closer to a world without fear of cancer. One of these breakthroughs is our capacity to scale personalized medicine. For example, a simple blood test can lead to AI-enabled clinical decision support to aid the prognosis of disease progression of cancers and enable preventative measures.
The second theme of the 2023 Keynote is the challenge of delivering high-quality care to greater numbers of people. Far too many patients continue to find the healthcare system intimidating and inconvenient, preventing them from getting the timely care they need. The Covid pandemic was in many ways a catalyst forcing healthcare providers to think about new ways to deliver care. To ensure that everyone gets the care they need when they need it, we need to find creative new ways to expand access to care, deliver more decentralized care closer to patients, and we need to build more smartly-connected healthcare systems.
Many measures like these, designed to transform the system of care, are already underway. The Keynote provides insights into how innovative delivery models can combine the power of digitalization and technological advances to bring high-quality care to more patients, wherever they are, thereby increasing health equity and improving convenience and patient experience.
The third theme of the Keynote is the workforce crisis affecting healthcare systems across the globe. Labor shortages, lack of expertise where and when it’s needed, stress, caregiver burnout… the problems are familiar to everyone who works in the healthcare sector. When one factor in the growing demands being placed on healthcare systems as a result of demographic changes, it’s clear that this is an issue that is not going away.
Achieving operational excellence is an effective way to combat this crisis, creating a less stressful environment for healthcare workers, and freeing more professionals to spend more time on what matters most — caring for patients. Many tasks can be simplified by technology, and many capabilities can be enhanced and augmented. The Keynote brings together leaders in this area to discuss state-of-the-art ideas and breakthroughs that make it easier to care for those who care for others.
This article provides a snapshot of the issues that were addressed in the Siemens Healthineers Shape Keynote 23. To see the Keynote presentation in its entirety, please visit: https://events.siemens-healthineers.com/shape-keynote
