Top 5 Health Tech Startups to Follow in 2019

The world isn’t getting any younger. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, our population is aging faster than ever before. By 2020, the number of people aged 60 years will outnumber children under the age of 5. This poses a crucial question to humanity: How must health providers care for our aging population with such limited resources (i.e. medical supplies and staff)?

While this question creates an inescapable headache for governments and policy makers, it creates an untapped opportunity for investors and businesses to capitalize on the further rise in demand for healthcare products and services (including healthtech products). Today, we have an array of innovations that are attempting to tackle these gaps by revolutionizing the health-industry with the help of artificial intelligence and blockchain. By breaking away from the traditional treatment-based approach to health and moving toward a prevention-based health model, we have now transitioned to a world where proactive health is the new standard.

Unlike past practices, the healthcare industry is now more open and welcoming to health-tech innovations, owing to the recent tech-boom. Let’s take a look at the top 5 health-tech startups that are disrupting the current healthcare industry.

1) AdhereTech

Location: New York, USA

Niche: We all have trouble with adhering to a prescribed medicine regime. AdhereTech has come up with a smart solution for this! They have developed a smart pill bottle that notifies patients about the time at which they have to take their medicine. The bottle automatically sends an alert notification to the patient’s phone and also monitors his/her dosage and usage patterns. As the name already suggests, this smart bottle analyzes the adherence pattern of the patient. If it notices any non-adherence, it seeks feedback from the patient to help locate the reason for it to resolve it.

2) Playpal

Location: Colorado, USA

Niche: Powered by AI and blockchain, Playpal offers a simple solution to the biggest issue faced by the healthcare industry today: consolidation of large volumes of fragmented health data. Playpal collects your health-stats from your wearable health devices, government databases, and mHealth apps to offer you real-time and customized health recommendations that help you manage your health proactively. That’s not all! Playpal has partnered with the HIECOH Wealth Foundation to introduce a new Health Currency to its users as part of its gamified incentive model. Thanks to Playpal, its users can now earn health tokens for consistently adhering to its recommendations. So, get ready to earn money while living healthy!

3) CliniCloud

Location: California, USA

Niche: CliniCloud has designed a revolutionary interconnected medical kit that can be easily used at home to monitor your vitals. This medical kit works on wireless and non-contact principles. CliniCloud has successfully developed no skin-contact stethoscopes and thermometers. Using these, you can share your vitals with your doctor via cloud without having to be there. CliniCloud allows the doctors to deliver care to far off patients remotely, and is the epitome of convenient care.

4) Calm

Location: California, USA

Niche: Say goodbye to those uneasy nights in which you struggle to get a good night’s sleep. Calm uses a combination of various relaxing and meditation techniques to help you get a sound sleep. By offering a blend of relaxing scenes and calming sounds that help users de-stress. Calm not only improves its users sleep but also boosts their confidence levels and reduces their anxiety.

5) Feel

Location: California, USA

Niche: With increased awareness on the importance of sound mental health, more and more health-tech startups are focusing on building this aspect of the health industry. One such example is Feel, a wristband that tracks user’s emotional wellbeing and monitors biosignals in order to provide personal recommendations that improve mental health and emotion-regulation.

The Top 5 startups above make it evident that technology has vastly changed the structure of the healthcare industry. From revolutionary ideas like Playpal to innovative solutions like Feel, healthcare and health management is (without a doubt) on the heels of historic technological breakthroughs. New advancements have brought forward better healthcare delivery, advanced medical devices, more effective treatment plans, and proactive preventive care. We now live in an exciting time when corporations, government & institutions, and startups can collaborate to transform the existing systems across industries!

The Next Big Thing: 3 Major Trends in Digital Healthcare Technology Right Now

Every day, amazing new technological advancements help medical providers diagnose patients faster and more accurately, provide treatment options digitally, and monitor things like patients’ sleep, steps, weight, and heart rate. Technological progress isn’t slowing down anytime soon; this year, $8.1billion was invested in the industry—up 42% from the previous year.

So with all this investment, what will be the next big innovation in digital health technology? Well, it looks like there are three major trends in the field: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and the greater ability to share data between healthcare providers and patients.

The 3 Biggest Trends in Digital Healthcare Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere we look, from our kitchen (“Alexa, play my ‘dinner’ playlist”) to website chatbots. Every day, scientists are finding ways to use AI helps medical providers provide patients with better, faster, and more accurate care.

For instance, AI algorithms for health are being used to analyze radiology images. Currently, radiologists are overworked and overwhelmed. Because of the high number of patients, they can only spend mere seconds looking at images, which results in a high rate of misdiagnoses. AI can help by streamlining the analysis process, reducing the number of clicks radiologists need to perform a task, or by learning user preferences or habits to make diagnosis faster and more accurate. Automation helps relieve or prevent radiologist fatigue and improve diagnostic ability, so many companies are working on improving AI technology in the healthcare field.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality (AR) has been helping doctors use scans and images to diagnose patients and prepare for medical procedures. But new technology aims to help doctors during surgery to provide better, more accurate care.

During surgery, surgeons and their medical team need constant access to a large amount of data, including diagnostic images and vital signs. Currently, most operating rooms have 2D screens scattered around the room, and surgeons have to look away from the patient and the surgery to check them. For delicate surgical procedures, this can be dangerous.

AU can help make increase the success rate of surgeries. AU headsets are being designed that will allow doctors to see digital images, patient data, and other important things without having to look away from the patient. This will help reduce life-threatening errors and save money by reducing outdated displays.

Data Sharing

Big Data is talked about frequently in the health field currently, because in the past decade many developments have been made to provide patients and medical providers with greater and more accurate data about things like patients’ steps, sleep, weight, heart rate, and more. This trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon, as wearables and mHealth apps continue to become more advanced and widespread.
In particular, many leading health insurance companies are looking to or already have adopted methods to track and use patients’ quantitative data to create data-driven, incentive-based health policies that simultaneously will reduce costs and provide better care to patients.

Playpal - The Next Big Health Revolution 

Playpal is on the cutting edge of this data-driven healthcare technology. The Playpal platform uses extrinsic incentives and gamified challenges to give healthcare providers and insurance companies better access to patient data while providing more accurate care and diagnoses. Exciting technological advancements like AI, AU, and data-driven digital healthcare continue to improve patient care, streamline processes, and cut costs, making healthcare more effective and efficient.