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CES 2021 Digital Trends: Innovations in Healthcare and Technology

CES 2021: Digital Trends What happens when technology, healthcare, and human behavior collide? We explored the biggest digital trends emerging from CES 2021, from telehealth and AI to wearables, data privacy, and the home becoming the new healthcare hub. This report captures key takeaways, emerging opportunities, and predictions for how digital innovation will reshape the way brands connect with patients, HCPs, and consumers. The future isn’t just more digital. It’s more human.

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CES 2021 Digital Trends
CES 2021: Digital Trends This year’s Consumer Electronics Show, CES 2021, was a new–and an unprecedented– experience for everyone. Events in Las Vegas have always showcased awe-inspiring physical interactivity and immersive technology. Nonetheless, this year’s online event brought a number of influential speakers to the virtual stage, each with their own perspective on how society has adapted and will continue to evolve within our new landscape. The categories spanned Digital Health, Wellness, Smart Cities, Smart Homes, Drones, AI, 5G, Vehicle Tech, and numerous others with equally noteworthy keynote speakers. Microsoft’s President, Brad Smith, gave a “War Games” presentation on how the tech we create needs to serve the greater good. Not only has the pandemic precipitated our need for each other; it has also accelerated our need to innovate and redefine the ways in which we all talk, work, live, and stay connected. It’s worth noting that many of these trends aren’t new, but rather the reimagining of existing technologies to enable our survival. We believe several of these trends will continue to flourish in the coming years across many industries, but mostly in the healthcare and pharma space. This report highlights several key healthcare-related CES talks we attended and our collective perspective on 2021 trends and predictions. Key Topics The Bright Spots of 2021 Healthcare Trends Predictions for the Future 1 2 3
1 The Bright Spots of 2021 While healthcare was only a small segment of the roughly 200 sessions, many of our learnings were industry agnostic and that these technologies can serve multiple purposes. Several speakers shared insights around audience demands for more high-value content and around the importance of peer reviews and recommendations to inform customer decisions. This trend is accelerating decision-making and influencing the consumer path to conversion. We heard a resounding testimony from a variety of thought leaders that businesses should reflect on humanity’s needs and address the rippling economic impact COVID has had. There is tremendous opportunity to become more authentic in and purpose with customers while establishing more trusting relationships. We heard how vital it is for businesses to give back through supportive messaging, influencing positive routines with personal care, and embracing diversity and inclusion in an era of digital and social transformation. Companies are implementing more rigorous data privacy and security protocols, but this transformation is also empowering consumers to take control of their own information. This type of access to data is leading to more personalized content and a refinement of numerous HCP/patient communication tools, such as telemedicine and Voice/AI assistants, all of which can improve the patient/doctor relationship in a heavily regulated healthcare space.
2 Healthcare Trends By a landslide, telehealth was the most prominent of all digital health discussions at CES 2021. It was a featured subject and also received honorable mention in several discussions. In the United States, telehealth usage skyrocketed from 11% in 2019 to 76% in the second half of 2020 mostly due to COVID-19. The market responded by releasing many clinical-grade tools for both patients and professionals. The Home as the Healthcare Hub A common theme was around virtual care services to convert the home into the central point of care. Many discussions challenged the idea that a patient must visit a healthcare facility to receive routine and even specialized health services. Basic healthcare needs could be handled by remote-only and remote-hybrid (healthcare assistants offer at-home visits while still under the virtual guidance of a licensed professional) scenarios. This landscape frees up the medical facilities for higher-level care and emergency services. Another area of interest was how mental health and wellness has bounded into telehealth and virtual services. Less burdened by some of the narrow restrictions of other therapeutic areas, companies that provide mental health services have embraced the virtual channels much faster than other types of providers. It will be interesting to watch the expanding features and capabilities of these platforms in the coming months and years, since they seem to have jumped so quickly out of the gates. Wearables & Devices (& Telehealth) As usual for CES, there were loads of health technologies announced, shamelessly plugged, and slyly referenced during the conference. There was an impressive mix of watches, wrist bands, rings, hearables, smart medicine bottles, sleep trackers, sensors to monitor vital signs, iOT integrations, an Alzheimer detection helmet, a nasal-inserted infrared device that creates antihistamines, and an incontinence detector.
Even in a completely virtual conference, the specter of COVID-19 was still able to haunt the show floor. We saw several examples of high- technology personal masks meant to filter potential contagions and pollution while also amplifying your voice and providing the perfect LED color to reflect your current mood. Several “clean tech” products were announced, which are usually composed of antimicrobial materials, that utilized Ultraviolet-C lighting for disinfection, incorporated air filtration features, or some combination of both. Of course, telehealth was a large part of the digital health exhibit as well. Devices designed for remote patient monitoring and at-home testing/diagnosis were featured along with the usual CES flavors. There was a noticeable trend to combine disparate diagnostic tests into a single device, possibly even one that can help connect directly to your primary healthcare professional so that they can review the data as it is being sent. Artificial Intelligence & Data (& Telehealth) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are historically an integral feature of a larger product or service, and that trend continued at CES. We observed several discussions around intelligence to help drive processing of data, computer vision, and handling of lower-level tasks. You guessed it! This included discussions around using AI for the purposes of telehealth. It was a recurring topic that AI should handle lower-level tasks in order to free up people to perform higher-level functions and create meaningful patient interactions. This may include smart imaging to help with early diagnosis, persistent monitoring of biomarkers from wearables, and generally working to improve outcomes, and possibly, lower costs. Companies have led the charge in trying to define higher levels of standardization or interoperability of healthcare data. AI tools are being developed to augment human intelligence and create greater efficiency with information that may be incomplete or improperly captured during patient visits. Healthcare data is evolving to mirror banking transactions, becoming more available and secure for people to access.
3 Predictions for the Future Organizations are doubling down on the removal of third-party cookies. And tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have started phasing them out in their platforms – Google’s Chrome browser, Apple’s latest OS/iOS versions, MS Edge, and Facebook’s audience network. It’s difficult to predict the overall impact this will have on advertisers, but establishing key media partnerships and superior first-party data practices will be crucial to understanding audience behavior. And this can only be achieved with more advanced data capturing techniques and parsing information and metrics in a way that enables a more complete understanding of the customer journey. This includes paid ads that will need to be more relevant and targeted in order to achieve conversion. Conclusion While CES 2021 may not have been the ultimate litmus test for the future of virtual conferences, it did offer us a glimpse of how several businesses across various industries are forging ahead. We witnessed health tech solutions equipped with valuable data designed to empower better healthcare decisions. We saw product developers who are taking steps to reshape the doctor/patient relationship through more convenient–and secure–communication tools. And we heard from industry leaders how their businesses are prioritizing consumer trust through more supportive and purposeful initiatives. It’s no surprise that the brands that have taken early steps to rethink innovation have weathered the economic storm better than their competitors. And it should come as no surprise that the most successful brands aren’t just the most innovative, but they are also the most relevant. Contributors Serge Bisson SVP, Customer Experience Planning serge.bisson@harrisonandstar.com Matt Routh VP, Director of Innovation mrouth@harrisonandstar.com Denise Salazar Customer Experience Planner denise.salazar@harrisonandstar.com