Health Market

As a result, healthcare costs are increasing. According to the International Health Forum (IHF), the demand for assistance services is greater than the supply. It is estimated that in 2032 there will be a lack of care resources regarding patient needs, especially with regard to non-invasive and rehabilitation treatments.

This crisis is partly driven by the aging of the global population pushed by rising life expectancy. As such, treatments to maintain this extended life journey of the population are becoming more important. These treatments involve two scenarios. The first is a primary event prevention scenario where we focus on reducing the risk of possible events in the population and the second involves interventions regarding the maintenance of life, where we direct resources to promote or restore the individual's health. It is precisely at this point that rehabilitation has a fundamental role to play in the maintenance of the elderly population, functioning as a way to restore health and promote the insertion of the individual in society, quickly and safely, reducing hospital expenses with prolonged hospitalizations, bringing comfort and better adherence to treatments by patients and their families.

Health spending is growing faster than the global gross domestic product (GGDP). Solving the problems impacting the management of Health Systems, therefore, does not guarantee sufficiency and solvency. Acting objectively and assertively is also required, using appropriate forms of investment in technologies that can bring more benefits without burdening or wasting the applied revenues in health care. Today we live in a resource management reality, not restricting their use, but managing the way they are used more effectively. By analyzing the Health Innovations Forum, we can see that the greatest financial losses in healthcare occur with unnecessary or obsolete expenses and services in terms of patient needs.

The demand for specialized health services is growing faster than the supply. Individuals are living longer, but the health economy is being scrapped with mismanagement and inappropriate investments. The pandemic we recently experienced is the result of this “bubble”. The way in which we underestimate health contingencies was devastating and brought to the fore the weaknesses of a plastered and unproductive health system that lacks the necessary technological equipment in number and quality to face such challenges as those raised by Covid-19.

Technology should be seen as an essential point in Modern Medicine. This availability is not only feasible, but necessary, especially in health models like the American one, which merges three types, the main, the supplementary and the complementary model. This triad works like a tripod and the three must be in harmony to establish a long-term balance, but with an immediate imperative.

How is rehabilitation inserted in this context? Simple. The new rehabilitation technologies are linked to the individual's cost management. We need to understand that a patient within a hospital unit consumes several resources that have often already been descheduled for the evolution of their treatment. Our goal is to try to improve patient compliance, bringing this monitoring closer to family members and also reducing the risk of cross-infection from hospitals and investing resources in technologies that promote faster, safer and more cost-effective dehospitalization for the hospital network.

Virtual reality brings countless possibilities for evaluating the individual, including options that provide greater precision and assertiveness, which may therefore also shorten the time of medical follow-up and direct the needs in more timely and specific ways. Examples include not only the promotion of scenarios aimed at the type of challenge of the pathology but also the measurement of the motor force by the pressure imposed on the joysticks or changes in the respiratory resistance that the patient will have to overcome to improve lung dynamics after diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis and even the sequelae of Covid-19. In the cardiological part, we associate it with equipment that simulates riding a bicycle or even running, with the potential of defining the intensity and consistency of physical activities, promoting a physiological contribution to this demand. In this context, we can see the United States as an ideal scenario to promote the viability of the model as it is a reference in technology due to the availability of resources, the population's profile and, mainly, the excellence of the medicine practiced there.

The sustainability of the current rehabilitation model using virtual reality and artificial intelligence is something concrete, but it still has few applications due to factors that lead to the need for a place that has everything that has been mentioned here. The American health model is perfect for the model, not only because of the demographic transition profile and age group of the population, but also because of the available resources and hospitals with vertical models, which can adhere to this technology regardless of the limitations of health plans and just submit the claims by health insurance.

The year 2016 was dubbed as the VR hype year. Goldman Sachs predicted the VR market would hit $80bn by 2025 ($35bn software vs $45bn hardware), and foresaw that healthcare would be the second most lucrative VR industry (after videogames) worth $5.1bn. In addition, companies like Oculus and China’s smartphone giant HTC launched their virtual reality headsets for consumers, and received much praise. VR promised to revolutionize not only the world of videogames, but the world of healthcare as well – suggesting that VR healthcare was the next big thing.

When VR in healthcare was mentioned in 2016, the idea of treating patients virtually wasn’t new. In academia, the medical practitioners behind Israel’s “SeeMee” had been using VR brain trauma treatments since 2009, while Josef Haik, director of Sheba Medical Center’s Burn Center, has long used VR to relieve the pain of severe burns.

Today, most players have developed gamified solutions that encourage patients to move their body while wearing a VR headset: the big sell is that VR exercises can be monitored and personalized to a patient’s different and changing needs as they progress through their recovery.

But who’s benefiting from these VR healthcare solutions? And what’s stopping the companies behind the solutions from going mainstream?

“Would you, as a patient, pay $20 or $50 a month for something that could actually restore function to your arm? The answer in most cases is yes.”

Find one big comprehensive center, which has both an inpatient and outpatient unit and can provide the ecosystem for technology help across the continuum of care. The most important step for a VR healthcare startup is to find a suitable partner to prove its concept, he adds. This is the main reason for needing the United States to continue with the company.