Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, digital technologies have taken a front seat in businesses across industries globally. The healthcare industry is harnessing the massive potential of digital in response to the pandemic, leveraging billions of online datasets, mobile phones, and connected devices. AI-ML NLP advances and varied other technological capabilities have made inevitable inroads into the lives of people, and healthcare businesses across platforms. The entire perception has transformed about healthcare and its massive appeal and consumers have undergone a major awakening in terms of being healthy via digital adoption. Covid-led unprecedented public health emergency has unfurled few things – Wider technological dependence with greater emphasis on remote-care, preventive measures while protecting personal data, adhering to privacy norms.COVID-19 pandemic is now acting as the biggest transformation catalyst in the consumers’ behavior and businesses involved in the healthcare sector. Let’s explore briefly but precisely!

1. Telemedicine

Covid-19 has created a paradigm shift in the healthcare sector,  focusing on virtual setups and remote treatment of patients. People got confined to homes and getting ill meant consulting a doctor on a digital platform. Several telemedicine apps have come to the fore and are surging on a greater scale today. Telemedicine is allowing healthcare providers to deliver healthcare services remotely. Technology is playing the main role, and remote patient care, online consultation, virtual treatment,home-diagnostics, etc. are helping people immensely. People are happy with telemedicine procedures and the healthcare fraternity, too. This acceptance is leading to massive adoption of digital technologies like AI, Robotics, IoT, Blockchain, etc. for creating modern telemedicine apps, solutions, and tools.

2. On-Demand Pharmacy

Consumers and healthcare businesses both leveraged the power of digital and resorted to mobile phones for specific apps, online pharmacy, and on-demand medicine delivery solutions. As per market research conducted by Zion Market research, the e-pharmacy market is estimated to grow to USD 107.53 B by the end of 2025. Pharmacy businesses have started adopting selected models as per requirement, viz., they can go for medicine delivery app for single-store, or can go for an aggregator medicine delivery app development type, or direct-to-customer type of customized app model. COVID-19 has opened up these avenues abundantly from business perspectives as well as consumers’ convenience and demand.

3. Health Insurance App Surge

The demand for health insurance rose in COVID times. People realized the importance of their health safety leading to a surge in demand for the coverup, Covid cover in particular. Health Insurers have come up with specialized mobile apps that are helping customers across b2b and b2c segments in the healthcare industry. As per a recent  Statista Report, there were 218 billion mobile apps download by consumers,  to their connected devices, in 2020 alone. So, mobile applications are benefitting consumers and insurance companies alike. Digital capabilities-led Insurance Mobile Apps allow three major types of functionalities-

• Functionality for healthcare providers – Allows direct access to patients’ histories, valuable doctor-patient communication.

• Functionality for Patients – Allows searchingfor doctors, accessing related documents as well as receiving timely reminders.

• Functionality for choosing as well as purchasing insurance policies– Allows users in choosing and purchasing perfect health insurance plans, even renew the existing policies. This functionality also includes in-app payments, communicating with insurance agents, and so on.

4. Shift to Healthy Lifestyle

People have realized the importance of Eating Healthy, Living Healthy. The COVID-19 has alarmed them that how a weak immune system can cost precious lives.   Immunity boosting has become their priority over the past two years and resorting to their 24*7 companion, mobile devices, for varied nutrition apps. Nutrition mobile apps help to track nutrition intakes and calorie counts, having an enormous database containing food insights, recipe importer, barcode scanner, restaurant logger, and a lot more.  These powerhouse apps help to monitor nutrition levels, weight balance, warning alerts for bad food habits, planning meals with nutrition facts, extracting insights based on personal data, etc. AI-ML-powered virtual apps help to provide personalized recommendations and have a multilingual platform.

5. Virtual Fitness

Fitness and wellness form the core of the healthcare industry. Fitness facilities shut down quickly after the pandemic struck at the onset of 2020. Amidst lockdowns, gyms and fitness centers had to close down for an unlimited period. Non-essential workers stayed at home which limited their fitness options and this triggered the rise of virtual fitness apps. Technology in the form of IoT-Sensor powered mobile apps, youtube videos are enabling people to get a long-term workout plan at home itself. Whether it is for losing weight or building strength,easy-to-follow video workout guides, a fitness app helps to track, map all runs and allows to log in to more than 500 activities (customized apps) like gym workouts, cycling, yoga, walking, cross-training, etc. The app provides a gear tracker that tracks mileage and can connect to varied devices to import, analyze personal data for regular guidance.

6. Realization on Logistics Challenge

One of the biggest challenges that surfaced during the pandemic was the lack of adequate logistics and inventory management systems. During the entire  COVID-19 pandemic, shortages in medical oxygen greatly affected hospitals in  India, Brazil, Nigeria, Peru, Italy, and even the US. Lack of timely supply of oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators, oxygen generators, etc. proved fatal to many COVID patients who succumbed because oxygen was not available on time. In the wake of this challenge, many companies chipped in and started resorting to mobile and web app-based digital tracking systems. This trend has picked momentum and there’s been a big boost in the web & mobile app development dealing with logistics and inventory solutions.

Health is Wealth via Technology

From 2020 onward, the world is seeing a major surge in healthcare technologies. Artificial Intelligence – IoT-powered telemedicine apps, virtual healthcare, remote patient-monitoring, self-care, etc. have picked momentum. People are opting for mobile apps to seek healthcare solutions at competitive costs. Virtual healthcare can deal with all health problems, with this realization the healthcare industry has started evolving at an unabated pace leveraging digital technologies across the ecosystem.

How healthcare has evolved for you? As healthcare applications and integrated technology get more accessible, it’s time businesses start investing in real transformation. Speak to our experts today!

Digital Transformation is the transformation of industries using ace digital technologies like AI, ML, Blockchain, Robotics, IoT, Clouds, etc., and integrating them with their respective structures, as per specific company requirements. New platforms and applications are integrated to fetch that ultimate seamless experience for the end-users and customers. The fintech industry does not take much time for a complete digital transformation/makeover as compared to other industries like retail, healthcare, or education. The reason is that financial services are mostly dealing with structured, quantitative data that facilitate easier digitizing and automating of varied processes involved. Fintech brings innovation, transformation in all sorts of financial services. The massive surge in demand for mobile apps, digital payment systems such as cashless, e-wallet, mobile-banking, chatbots handling customer financial inquiries, all have led to the rapid shift in consumers’ demand and preferences. Whereas if we compare the quantum of digital drive in other aforementioned industries, it is not as fast as that in the fintech. Rather, fintech has some inevitable roles within the integrated functioning of other industries like retail , education or healthcare.

State of Digital Transformation for Key Industries

1. Retail

The Retail global digital transformation market stood at 143.55 billion USD in the year 2020. It is expected to touch 388.51 billion USD by the year 2026 (source – Mordor Intelligence report).

In the retail industry, digital transformation covers three major aspects –

• Customer- Experience
• Supply-Chain
• Enterprise-Agility

As per PWC’s study, just one bad experience would cause  32% of customers to stop interacting with a brand. According to  Business Insider, due to a shift in consumer behavior and several other challenges, the retail industry saw  70% failure of digital transformation projects in the year 2017. On the other hand, Gartner says that  77% of retailers would like to consider adopting AI while 87% indicated that Robotics for warehouses will be the top use case by 2021.

2. Education

COVID-19 has changed the face of the education industry. The learning and development have taken a complete digital makeover. However, the digital transformation process has not been a smoother and easy one for the industry. Widespread virtual mode of learning, teaching with no access to real-life libraries, have created a frustration-led environment for teachers, educators, students, staff, and the entire industry. In fact, students are unwilling to pay the whole fees, and higher education seeing partial refunding of fees, too. This is just an example of several challenges in the sector where digital transformation is facing tough to take-off.

As per GPE report–

• Due to the pandemic effect, 126 million children have been cut-off from their schools in lower-income countries.
• GPE supporting partner countries by US$500million on the sector as a response to the pandemic crisis. Digital means remain the viable options, too!

3. Healthcare

This year, a significant revelation in healthcare has been about consumers’ priorities –better and convenient access to all the healthcare services, and, more price transparency.

One notable impact of technology in the healthcare sector is the scope of digital transformation as follows-

• Telemedicine
• AI-enabled medical devices
• Blockchain-Electronic health records
• Web and mobile apps and solutions
• Streamlining physicians’ jobs
• Improvement of patients’ outcomes
• Optimization of systems
• Reduced cost operations
• Low human-error

Medtech firms having specific consumer-focused products & services are likely to create a foothold post-pandemic. Moreover, as per the recent 9^th annual Industry Pulse survey, the valuable insights from 185 healthcare leaders for  2021, 32.2% said that retail companies, the big tech will greatly impact the current business models deployed by the healthcare industry.AI and ML were the preferred choices of the healthcare industry respondents while  RPA was the highest chorus among them for ‘NO’. Once the pandemic effect abates, it’s expected that there’d be a greater level of demand for testing equipment as well as online pharmacy use. Contrarily, the demand for elective procedures that are hospital-based and shifting to outpatient settings, will see a permanent lower side. As per Digital Authority Partners insights, the US healthcare market is going to see $5.7 trillion in national health spending by the year 2026.

How Fintech is Shaping Other Industries

The Healthcare industry is though undergoing a slow pace of digital transformation, the role of fintech within its business models is unparalleled. Fintech serves this industry by revitalizing and modernizing healthcare networks as it brings some improved, digitally oriented, financial service-models into the very sector! Several fintech solutions such as digital payments, do simplify varied payment processes for patients, as well as processing volumes of healthcare-related data on a much faster scale and speed. The retail industry is equally impacted by fintech, viz. role of digital capabilities like websites and mobile applications are mostly catering to the payment stream because customers are preferring digital payment modes and carry digital wallets in their mobiles 24*7. So, we can see the ubiquity of fintech in almost every industry as finance as a service plays a major integrated role.

Why Fintech is leading in Digital Transformation?

• High Investment from all businesses
• Fastest digital adoption
• Diversified projects at pilot and advanced level in Innovation

As per a recent IBM study, engaging unique customers with smarter experiences anytime and anywhere is the need of the hour. A massive 84% of customers consider the overall experience provided by a company is as valuable as its products and services. Hence, to meet this kind of rising customer-expectations, a company needs to digitally transform all the lines of customer services for delivering a better-unified experience. Not just customer-centric approaches but companies need to intensify approaches towards smooth relations between business partners and employees.

Conclusion

Fintech is impacting industries such as retail, education, and healthcare where consumers want convenient transaction solutions in every financial interaction within the structured systems. As per the Global Fintech Adoption Index, before the pandemic, fintech was doubling every two years. The industry grew from 16 percent in 2015 to a striking 64 percent in 2019. The reason behind this growth is not just the fintech’s agility but it has become an essential survival tool for businesses across the industries , especially from 2020 onward. Acting as a core enabler for the fast migration to digital payment, it has become a mandatory part of everyone’s life – consumers and businesses, alike. While 2020 was merely about survival, 2021 and beyond will see convenience, structured inclusion as well as sustainability factors leading to the adoption of financial technologies.

Whether you belong to FinTech or any other Industry, digital transformation is here to stay and evolve into new dimensions. Connect us to explore the new possibilities for your Industry.