Niels Van Namen discusses a future in which the home becomes the primary place to receive healthcare. During the talk, Niels argues despite dramatic advances in health sciences, the prevalence of inpatient hospitalization persists. Niels mentions a study that estimates that 40%  of hospitalized patients can receive care in the home. He also says some additional services that healthcare providers may provide in the patient's house instead of visiting the health system for care.

 

While his conversation contains rhetoric contradictory to health systems, such as the revenue used to purchase "shiny new buildings," the underlying premise is not invalid. Treatment of many chronic diseases in the home is achievable for most of the duration of the illness (Roshanghalb et al., 2018). I reviewed Niels associations and his business in the area of healthcare business development. It is clear from his rhetoric that he's advocating industry and not a cause. That messaging does not detract from the message regarding the management of chronic illness in the home.

 

Smart devices such as glucometers, scales, and watches gather many data elements and provide powerful tools to manage diseases (Tian et al., 2019). I see a future that relies less on the delivered services discussed by Niels Van Namen and more on the analysis of data from in-home technologies. Machine learning algorithms can ingest large quantities of information and identify trends otherwise not apparent. Identifying problems before a health crisis develops reduces hospitalizations through the timely delivery of medical care (Dinh-Le et al., 2019).

 

In conclusion, the author presents a future in which services usually delivered in the hospital can move to a patient's home. I believe the deployment of in-home smart technologies and the deployment of machine learning algorithms reduce the services needed through the early identification of health changes.

References

Dinh-Le, C., Chuang, R., Chokshi, S., & Mann, D. (2019). Wearable Health Technology and Electronic Health Record Integration: Scoping Review and Future Directions. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, 7(9), e12861. https://doi.org/10.2196/12861

 

Roshanghalb, A., Lettieri, E., Aloini, D., Cannavacciuolo, L., Gitto, S., & Visintin, F. (2018). What evidence on evidence-based management in healthcare? Management Decision, 56(10), 2069-2084. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-10-2017-1022

 

Tian, S., Yang, W., Grange, J. M. L., Wang, P., Huang, W., & Ye, Z. (2019, 2019/09/01/). Smart healthcare: making medical care more intelligent. Global Health Journal, 3(3), 62-65. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glohj.2019.07.001