It’s the labour shortages, Stupid
It’s not the lack of money or new tech which will finally kick-start public sector healthcare systems into massive change. It’s the massive labour shortages which are opening up now.
Daan Dohmen runs FocusCura, a healthcare innovation company and digital chronic disease management platform which already has over 100,000 Dutch patients, which is now active in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the UK. Back in 2008, he wrote a Phd, which forecast massive and imminent labour shortages in healthcare. “What then happened was the depression which kept employees in safe care jobs. It is only now that we return to full employment that we are seeing them quitting.” He says that the Netherlands alone now has a shortage of 125,000 nurses according to the Dutch government.
And this, he says, is what will drive change and finally force the cosseted medical profession and politicians (HBI’s description) to accept the need for radical change and digital solutions.
Increasingly, it is clear to us that this will be delivered by for-profit digital health companies. We name half a dozen players who have now made the business case and are gaining mass scale – outfits like KRY and Medgate in the digital delivery of primary care and FocusCura in chronic disease management programmes. The HIMSS 2018 digital health conference showed that what we are NOT seeing is the emergence of powerful apps/services from within the public sector. This is because it is too fragmented, with deployment dependent upon the personal likes and dislikes of individual doctors and departments.
But the business case for for-profit digital health is now overwhelming with cost savings of 40-60% proving a reality in many sectors.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Max Hotopf or call 0207 183 3779.
