The following is a guest article by Sharad Patel, Digital Trust in Healthcare and Life Sciences Expert at PA Consulting, and Radhika Bogahapitiya, Digital Trust Expert at PA Consulting
Innovative home healthcare products are taking center stage, connecting insights across the wider health ecosystem. And it’s a rapidly growing space; by 2035, the US home healthcare services market is expected to reach $317.9 billion. The shift to healthcare at home will save costs and improve clinical outcomes through user-centric digital solutions. However, their success is hugely dependent on trust.
Across the health ecosystem, there’s enthusiasm for digital solutions that move care from hospital to home. Telemedicine, remote monitoring, and connected medical devices are making high-quality care more accessible and convenient, empowering people to self-manage their care while gathering valuable data to enhance solution development.
Individuals – and health systems – are increasingly concerned about how their health data will be protected. High-profile breaches have fed wariness about the collection and storage of outputs from medical technology. Nobody wants to have their data stolen, and no organization wants to be the next cyber-attack headline. This has slowed adoption and compromised the quality of clinical interventions.
The shift to home-based healthcare needs a new way of thinking to build trust with patients. Trust principles can support the creation of controls that improve people’s willingness to share individual-specific data for personalized experiences. Medtech developers who proactively deliver trust controls will build better relationships with users and professionals and stand out in a crowded market. But how do they get there? What can they do now to achieve a prime position in the next five to 10 years?
A Comprehensive Trust Framework
Privacy, security, and data controls are fundamental pillars of building confidence in digital solutions. But, within medtech companies, the areas of data privacy, cybersecurity, and data governance are often owned by different teams, leading to fractured approaches. By implementing a trust framework that embeds the necessary security, privacy, data, and safety functions across systems and processes, otherwise known as ‘trust by default’, developers can create outputs that are, by nature, trusted and trustworthy.
An integrated trust framework will help medtech developers to bring together different functions such as product management, R&D, legal and compliance, IT, and cybersecurity, breaking down silos to put trust at the heart of all decisions. It guides the creation of user-centric, accessible, transparent solutions under umbrella frameworks.
This is particularly important as technology and use cases evolve. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) will provide enhanced interoperability, connecting devices and data in secure environments to better support users. Real-time analytics will enable professionals, and where appropriate, patients, to view diagnostics from devices. And, of course, AI-powered health platforms will support the analysis of health issues, with built-in ethical controls. A comprehensive trust framework will be crucial in addressing wider concerns about data usage – amplified by mass data gathering conducted by AI systems.
The Criticality of User-Centric Controls
Earning and keeping patient trust requires more than compliance; it takes proactive, transparent, user-centric design and controls, which allow users to customize which data is shared by a digital solution and when. These controls need to be intuitive to use across a wide range of user groups with varying levels of digital literacy.
Solutions with trust by default at their core embed user controls that build reassurance with both patients and healthcare professionals. Many tech platforms have embedded trust centers where users can, for example, opt in or out of third-party data sharing that offers tailored advice around meal plans. It’s about control and choice, enabling individuals to manage their own data in a way that’s comfortable and appropriate for them.
Healthcare Professionals as Part of the Solution
Patient engagement drives adoption, but healthcare professionals need to trust new products in order to recommend them. Prescribers have significant influence and knowledge making them the perfect partners for device developers to enhance solution development.
Bringing healthcare professionals into the design and testing process elevates the solution. In the same vein, medtech marketing teams can develop specific campaigns to engage with healthcare professionals, helping them to make the right recommendations and support successful adoption.
Another upshot of building secure, safe, compliant solutions is that medtech developers can diversify into new business models for their healthcare customers. Managed services around device security and data analytics products create unique selling points for healthcare providers, unlocking new sources of revenue. And, importantly, bringing digital trust expertise to new solutions cuts costs related to downtime, compliance, and administration. It’s a win-win.
Merge Rigor with Agility
Today’s consumers are more willing to use or pay for digital health tools from tech companies such as Apple and Oura (a lifestyle tracker). Why? Because they’re great at customer centric innovations with less complexity and bring products to market at pace with the agility to consistently improve.
On the other hand, medtech companies are great at building complex products designed to transform patients’ lives, under rigorous safety and quality testing practices. Alongside safety and quality, security, privacy, and data governance requirements are ‘must have’ components of medtech products to meet regulatory compliance.
Through cross-sector inspiration and collaboration, medtech developers and tech companies could create a new generation of consumer tech and medical devices. This new generation, characterized by user-centric apps and well-communicated security and privacy features, will go beyond basic compliance to offer additional reassurances. Mixing agile approaches with trust frameworks, safety rigour, and risk management is a powerful combination, improving trust and, ultimately, solutions themselves. This shift in mindset will enable both industries to co-create value propositions, integrating and aligning product, marketing, and digital trust teams to create robust solutions that increase adoption and improve clinical outcomes.
Trust: The Foundation of Transformation
Data privacy, governance, and cybersecurity are more than compliance obligations, they generate strategic value. Embedding robust, user-centric trust controls into home healthcare solutions at pace can deliver both superior patient experiences and market differentiation.
By treating privacy, data governance, and cybersecurity as value-creation tools, with trust by default as an overarching principle, medtech companies won’t just meet obligations: they’ll power the future of connected home-based care.
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