What's the newest, biggest challenge in health IT?
It's the same old problem – getting new ideas to move quickly down the healthcare industry's long runway for technological innovation, according to a survey of 122 health tech company founders, executives and investors.
Silicon Valley Bank released data from its survey taken at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based bank's HealthTech NYC event earlier this month.
When asked what will have the largest impact on health technology investments over the next 12 months, 34% of these lenders and entrepreneurs chose existing technologies gaining traction and showing promise.
Healthcare policy trailed at 22%, followed by innovative new technologies at 17%, the wants of private equity investors at 10% and the U.S. election for president at 7%.
Concurrently, when asked what is the biggest challenge the health technology industry faces today, it wasn't the tech. A plurality of these high tech business leaders has the same most pressing problem as their low-tech business peers – finding customers.
Adoption of their technologies by consumers, patients and other clients was the biggest hurdle, cited by 37% or respondents, followed by government regulation at 34%. Technological hurdles ranked a distant third, cited by 8%. Access to funding and pricing both ranked at 6%, competition at 3% and other issues came in at 7%.
As to which innovations will have the greatest impact on the health tech sector in 2017, big data came in large with 46%, followed by artificial intelligence at 35%, the Internet of Things at 15%, and virtual reality and robotics tied at 2%.
