EU Healthcare Predictions and Outlook, 2020

Amid rising global trade tensions and sluggish global economic outlook for 2020, the global healthcare market is expected to cross the 2-trillion-dollar mark in 2020. In Europe, BREXIT is likely to have a strong impact on the United Kingdom, Europe's biggest digital health market. 2020 will be a global reality check for long-pending national healthcare policies and regulatory reforms that must re-invigorate future strategies. Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) will emerge as a big theme across progressive health systems as they seek to proactively engage patients and improve health outcomes that would help healthcare organizations meet quality standards. This decade will bring significant changes and disruptions when it comes to digital-service-enabled health. Health and care delivery, as well as prevention in the 2020s, will become more consumer-centric, with AI-powered tools and virtual interactions between patients and care providers becoming the new normal in many situations. Data-driven interoperability and personalized diagnostics will accelerate the delivery of predictive-analysis-driven precision care. This will pave the way for better and efficient decision making for the patient and the provider and further drive partnerships between big tech companies that design care delivery models and healthcare organizations. This follows the new vision for healthcare for 2020 and beyond, focusing not only on access, quality, and affordability but also on predictive, preventive, and outcome-based care models that promote social and financial inclusion. In 2020, consumer-driven models of healthcare will gain more market traction, as they stand to better bridge the gap of what consumers want and what healthcare can deliver. Central and Eastern Europe is highly fragmented and is emerging as quite an attraction to healthcare investors. Screening services are facilitating better diagnosis of chronic conditions. The rise in disposable income and in healthcare spending is because of the presence of a rapidly aging population and their demand for better healthcare. Economic factors are also at play, with rising wages and disposable incomes freeing up personal money for healthcare-related spending. With the recent rise in minimum wages in Hungary and other recent reforms in various parts of Central and Eastern Europe, the economy in CEE and a parallel drop in unemployment rates are ideal for market participants. Author: Bejoy Daniel