How Power May Yet Be HealthTech’s Undoing
- By Winston Thomas
- May 17, 2021
Healthtech is now the biggest talk in town. Ever since COVID-19 reared its ugly head, new advances in telemedicine and other healthtech applications are changing how we see medical care.
Governments are taking note. The Infocomm Media Development Authority and Enterprise Singapore expanded the range of preapproved teleconsultation digital solutions from May 2020. It announced grants and subsidies to encourage small and medium-sized healthcare providers to adopt these digital solutions.
Such interest is spurring investments. In McKinsey & Company’s article “Healthtech in the fast lane: What is fueling investor excitement?” the authors highlight that venture funding reached dizzying heights of USD 5.4 billion in the first half of 2020 alone.
Physicians and patients are also getting cozier in sharing data, which in turn is accelerating adoptions.
The Bain & Company report “Asia-Pacific Front Line of Healthcare Report 2020” notes a growing openness between physicians and patients in the region toward telemedicine and remote care. Around 50% of the respondents said they were willing to adopt digital delivery models in the next five years.
Remote monitoring, telehealth, and virtual care delivery are also becoming popular as hospitals grapple with facility shortage. It is primarily because of the hospitals' pre-COVID-19 preference for lean operating business models that maximized revenues with return visits, optimized the number of beds, and the high dependence on onsite facilities medical care.
Like many other industries, data is behind the rise of healthtech. But power may just short-circuit these data-fueled dreams.
Linking power to mortality
Imagine performing a critical surgery when the power goes out. Ventilators shut down, lights go dim, the air filtration system stops, and the patient on the table is in danger of losing his, her or their lives.
“While traditional hospitals and healthcare organizations keep up with the technological advancements, they also need to ensure that their IT infrastructures and systems can support new technologies without any downtime,” says Hitesh Prajapati, country manager of Vertiv Singapore.
Major hospitals are prepared for such scenarios. But the problem is that it seldom involves cloud data centers.
“Uninterrupted access to critical data and workflows with minimal latency is imperative to the smooth operations of healthcare services,” says Prajapati.
It is why Vertiv is calling for an end-to-end power and cooling infrastructure for all applications and workloads used by all modern healthcare companies. It does not see a distinction between data centers that hold valuable patient data and hospitals that have medical equipment or facilities.
“We design, deploy and offer services to critical power and thermal infrastructures, which enable high-tech medical equipment and the data center assets accessible all the time and in the most efficient way,” says Prajapati.
For example, hospitals and healthcare facilities can leverage Vertiv's power distribution units (PDUs). These ensure that sufficient energy flows to the equipment and at the same time protect the equipment from power surges when switching back to the primary energy source.
Doctoring power inefficiency with AI
One area that will need such an end-to-end approach to infrastructure is the internet of medical things (IoMT) sector, which Deloitte sees growing to USD 158 billion in 2022.
Unlike many of today’s wearables, IoMT devices bring medical professionals closer to the consumers. They can quickly help consumers avoid any medical emergencies or help them go through one near real-time, based on data that these devices exchange.
Such data-intensive applications are sensitive to power outages. But that’s only one major problem. It also increases the carbon emission problem. A single IoMT device may not be an issue; a billion is.
It means healthtech companies need to improve the energy efficiency of their devices. “With these challenges, investments in energy-efficient technologies are growing. From medical infrastructure to IT Systems to patient services, the healthcare sector has been leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to address energy efficiency issues,” says Prajapati.
It is also where AI will become crucial. For example, an intelligent and integrated monitoring system can help hospitals and healthcare providers to have better visibility of their energy consumption and enable dynamic management of their energy consumption — an area that Vertiv is investing in.
“By analyzing how much energy is being used and identify the areas where energy efficiency can be increased, healthcare providers can significantly reduce energy costs,” says Prajapati.
And with ESG a hot-button issue, hospitals and healthtech companies will want their cloud providers to leverage energy-efficient cooling technologies and implement sustainable practices.
“As patients utilize telemedicine and virtual health services, the healthcare industry can further alleviate environmental impact through obvious benefits like reduced transportation activities,” Prajapati adds.
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends, HR&DigitalTrends and DataOpsTrends. He is always curious about all things digital, including new digital business models, the widening impact of AI/ML, unproven singularity theories, proven data science success stories, lurking cybersecurity dangers, and reimagining the digital experience. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Thomas-Soellner
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.