Did you know 59% of consumers in the US expect a healthcare patient experience similar to retail? And 51% of healthcare consumers feel that convenience plays the most crucial role in their decision-making.  

Well, welcome to the age of digitally-empowered healthcare consumers! 

The healthcare sector has seen unprecedented growth since 1960 to the present age of digitally-empowered consumers. It started with the emergence of Electronic health records or EHR. Ten years later, modern healthcare’s birth with the invasion of robotic techniques and 3D printing of dental implants. Nine years from 2000 till 2009 saw the advent of digital healthcare, and from 2010 we have been counting the golden time of healthcare consumerism. We have explained the whole evolution roadmap in below:

• Age of Discoveries (1960-1970): Disruption of EHR, telemedicine, computer tomography scan, and the first artificial heart.
• Growth of modern healthcare (1980-1990): Low invasion of robotics in surgery, 3D printing for dental implants, wearable digital hearing aid, and humane genome project. 
• Beginning of digital healthcare: (2000-2009): Health sensors, immersive and connected healthcare, mHealth apps, etc.
• Consumerism in healthcare (2010-present): Big data for accurate medicine, automated and AI-driven healthcare solutions, blockchain for collecting demographic data of patients, AR and VR powered diagnosis and medical training, cloud architecture for scalable healthcare service delivery, etc.      

Today, we are in the age of “Consumerism in Healthcare”, where the patient is the point of care and critical decision-maker. Patients own their data and share it with healthcare organizations as per consent. They have full access to medical information and demands more personalized and preventive healthcare services. In essence, they are the retail consumer of your healthcare services.