Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Digital technologies, like AI, have the potential to revolutionise how health systems care for patients. The challenge lies in identifying the actions needed to integrate them.
A new report by the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN) Health Alliance has named the major technology trends that can have genuine impact in the Australian health system in the coming year. They include:
- augmented intelligences
- simulations and simulacra
- remote patient care
- health system adaptability and dynamism
- harnessing biotechnology breakthroughs
Crucially, the Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-2025 also includes more than 100 case studies highlighting what is already possible. It also outlines the steps that can and should be taken to deploy the technologies, or ready for them, over the next 12 months.
Nithya Solomon, Director of the Health Transformation Lab at RMIT University in Melbourne, Victoria, which leads the NIIN Health Alliance, says the report does the heavy lifting for the health sector, prioritising important technological trends and offering short-term actions to pave the way for further – and, perhaps, faster – transformation.
“It covers a range of areas in which organisations and government can work towards integrating transformative technologies, from training skilled workers, to funding, to building secure data infrastructure, to building a digitisation roadmap.”
A closer look at the trends
Professor Vishaal Kishore, Executive Chair of the RMIT lab, told Cosmos artificial intelligence (AI) is the most hyped technology trend of 2024.
“There are a huge number of actual applications that are emerging or already there. If we could snap our fingers and deploy them, we could have a totally different health system. So, the potential for impact with AI is huge,” says Kishore.
They’ve termed the trend “augmented intelligences” – the use of AI and machine learning to enhance human cognitive tasks, not replace them.
For example, AI-powered breast cancer screening is already being implemented to
to highlight potential areas of concern in mammograms, allowing radiologists to focus on the most critical cases. An AI-driven platform is also being used to optimise hospital operations by predicting bottlenecks, recommending solutions, and automating processes.
But these technologies, and the infrastructure on which they rely, will need further development before they can be deployed at scale. Over the next year, there report identifies a need to “build robust data pipelines for high-quality data for AI training and operation, invest in skills around AI and potential uses, and establish partnerships to explore prerequisites to implementation.”
Using digital simulations to replicate, augment, and enhance interactions with the physical world, was also identified as a major trend.
“That can be things like digital twins … either of a person, or, interestingly, of a hospital or a health system, or even an ambulance network,” says Kishore.
“You essentially create a digital model of the physical process so that you can play with it and optimise things in the [digital] world without disrupting the real world.
“It also includes augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, where you use the digital world as a place, for example, to do rehab.”
3D printing can also bring digital designs into the real world, with healthcare applications ranging from custom-made prosthetics and implants to surgical models of a patient’s unique anatomy.
Several biotech innovations are also poised to bring about the next wave of transformation in healthcare, but they require a “digital backbone” to work at all.
“Nano robots that can treat cancer, or precision medicine that allow us to target chemotherapy in all kinds of interesting ways, or gene editing technologies like CRISPR. These are unbelievably momentous biotechnology shifts,” says Kishore.
“The question is: is our digital infrastructure ready for those kinds of breakthroughs? Can it leverage those breakthroughs when they come through?”
The NIIN Health Alliance was launched in 2023 to bring together industry, university, government, and health agencies to address these critical health challenges in Australia.
NIIN will present the report at the Singapore NIIN Health Alliance Summit 2024 in October and will hold roundtables with various parts of the health system to identify how to apply these ideas in practice.
They will then spend the next 12 months working on applied projects within the 5 trends – in their sandbox.
“It’s a place where we demonstrate technology, we make it look like a hospital or an in-home care setting, … and then we basically deploy technologies in there and work with hospitals or government players or insurers or technology groups to say: ‘this is how your technology will really work’,” he says.
“Why is that important? Because in our health system it’s really hard to experiment, because if you experiment in a ward, people can die.
“So, we get the proof of concept working in this space, then we make it talk to the hospital spaces, then we deploy it in the hospital space. It’s a step-by-step transformation process that the NIIN Health Alliance can walk with our partners all the way through.”
