Technology should serve people, and Accenture has identified five major key trends that, together, could forge a person-centered, -friendly, -empowering healthcare system. This is Accenture’s Digital Health Technology Vision for 2017.

“Should” and “could” are the important adverbs here, because if tech doesn’t deliver, driving efficiency and effectiveness, personalizing medical treatments, and inspiring people to become more health literate and health-engaging, then tech is just a Field of Dreams being built and available, with no people taking advantage of the potential benefits.

The five new-new tech trends are:

  • AI is the new UI, where healthcare experience is everything
  • Ecosystem power plays, going beyond platforms
  • The workforce market place, a more liquid, accessible, effective health care labor pool
  • Design for humans, to inspire positive health behaviors
  • The uncharted, redefining standards and organizations in healthcare.

“Its no longer about what technology can do for people,” Accenture suggests. “It’s about what people can do with technology.”

In health and healthcare, “what people can do with technology” impacts real-time workflows, diagnostics, treatments, research, tools, organizational design, business models, and consumer behaviors — from initial appointment scheduling through to self-care for conditions previously only treatable in tertiary (high-tech) hospital settings.

Today the home, the doctor’s, office, and a growing array of lower-cost sites can adopt any or all of these five technology trends to reinvent care at the front-end, bolster patients’ health outcomes, and reimagine and improve every touchpoint in-between. That’s a tall order and what I’m at Accenture HQ to help trend-weave.

Here in Chicago today, I’m midwifing a live webcast on these trends with Mike Redding, Managing Director of Accenture Ventures; Lisa Suennen, Managing Director at GE Ventures, blogger at Venture Valkyrie, and co-host of the Health TechTonics podcast; and, Dr. Kaveh Safavi, Senior Managing Director for Accenture’s global healthcare business who works with Accenture’s broad portfolio of healthcare clients.

Stay tuned for the webcast on the day, 25th July 2017, at 930 am Eastern, or tune into a video-on-demand replay after that date. The four of us will participate in a live conversation about these trends through the healthcare lens, informed by Mike’s work outside of the health/care segment, and Lisa’s and Kaveh’s up-close-and-personal work with ecosystem stakeholders. I’ll be keeping us firmly focused on the person at the center of healthcare — patients, providers, consumers and caregivers — and the opportunity for these technologies to help make healthcare better.