More than one out of six people in The Netherlands – nearly 17% – works in healthcare at a time when there’s a global shortage of healthcare workers. That’s too big a percentage of the workforce dedicate to one industry. By comparison, only 12% in the U.S. works in health-related fields. That’s unsustainable, says Carmen van Vilsteren, Director of the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Center (e/MTIC), entrepreneur and policymaker for the Dutch government.
Fortunately, new technologies in life sciences and health are transforming healthcare from a labor-intensive industry to a data-driven, innovation-intensive industry. New technologies, including artificial intelligence and photonic sensors, have the potential to make everything possible, from predicting infection rates to creating hospitals without beds “where we’ll only go for intervention." We now have evidence we may be able to reverse in the future, she noted.
In our latest white paper, we share five transformations that will shake up the healthcare industry.
In a keynote at the High Tech Next Conference at High Tech Campus Eindhoven on 8 December 2022, Carmen van Vilsteren detailed her contention that healthcare industry is undergoing five transformations. She also outlined how Eindhoven in The Netherlands is particularly well positioned to benefit economically from these transformations. Not investing in solving the care and prevention problems in the region could limit future growth.
The five transformations of future health
1. From manual to automated 2. From intramural to extramural and from professionals to consumers 3. From chronic disease to cure 4. From care and cure to prevention 5. From global health to planetary health
