Below is a snippet of our State of Healthcare Tech report. You can download the full report here.

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Prevention and wellness: Machine Learning (ML) and computer vision detect patterns and irregularities

Summary of current tech trends

The healthcare industry has evolved from focusing on downstream interventions, such as providing access to care and treatments, to prevention and wellness. In fact, according to McKinsey & Company’s Future of Wellness research, 82% and 73% of US and UK consumers, respectively, consider wellness a top priority in their everyday lives. This evolution is driven by the preferences of the modern healthcare consumer; according to a 2019 Accenture report, Gen-Zers are the least likely to have primary care physicians (55%) compared with previous generations and are more likely to seek wellness options instead of traditional medicine.

The likelihood of different generations having a primary care physician

Furthermore, a McKinsey & Company survey revealed that although 44% of global consumers were willing to share personal information with healthcare providers, the healthcare sector’s slow digital consumer adoption rate—the second-lowest, lagging behind other consumer-facing industries, such as entertainment, banking, and utilities—doesn’t allow it to keep up with consumer needs. This has allowed players in the prevention and wellness space to offer direct-to-consumer solutions that help consumers make healthy lifestyle choices, which can minimize the risk of preventable health conditions.

The emerging tech-related activities in the healthcare space that we tracked in 2024 were spread across the key components of prevention and wellness, namely self-care and diagnostics, and included activities related to fitness and training, sleep improvement, meditation and wellness, remote monitoring through wearables and smart devices, and cosmetic care.

Big Tech activity in this area was limited to a handful of partnerships split between Alphabet and Microsoft. Notable among these were Google Cloud’s partnership with PEAR Health Labs for the latter to leverage its Vertex AI platform and enhance its AI-powered fitness app, Aaptiv, and the deepening of Microsoft’s collaboration with Estée Lauder with the creation of an AI Innovation Lab, which will use the Azure OpenAI Service’s GenAI capabilities to support its beauty brands’ customer reach efforts.

Notable activity across Prevention and wellness

Tech deep dives

Machine Learning (ML) Enables sustained behavioral change through data analysis

According to a study published in the Clinical and Translational Science journal in 2020, a vast amount of data that can impact our health exists outside medical systems. Behavioral and social factors account for ~60% of our determinants of health, and genetic factors account for ~30%, while actual medical history accounts for just 10%. The study reports that an individual generates the equivalent of more than 300 million books of personal and health-related data during their lifetime. Harnessing and interpreting this data is central to prevention and wellness.

ML-based technology makes this feasible. It also enables sustained behavioral change—the cornerstone of prevention and wellness. Prevention and wellness technology applications such as wearables, smart device apps, and remote monitoring devices generate vast amounts of health data. ML can be used to analyze this data and provide users with personalized “nudges” to sustainably improve health behaviors, such as exercise, nutrition, and medication, and predict potential health risks, leading to the early detection of diseases and personalized prevention strategies.

 Notable activities in the testing and diagnostics field included product launches such as Ciba Health’s Thrive, an AI-powered disease prevention platform that offers comprehensive blood work with over 100 lab tests and on-demand education, and Thumos Care’s health optimization platform that provides personalized, AI-driven insights based on users' standard bloodwork and other health data.

The wellness space saw new product launches during 2024 such as Sleep.AI, an AI platform for sleep health developed by SleepScore Labs, and Kōkua XR, an AI meditation guide designed by Tripp, while Welltory received a credit facility to develop its wellness solution that promotes better sleep, lower stress, and improved physical activity.

 In the fitness space, FitXR and iFIT released updates to their platforms featuring an AI assistant and an AI coach, respectively, while Zing Coach raised funding to refine its AI coach technology.

Computer vision: A second and sharper set of eyes to scan health indicators

Computer vision, which focuses on understanding images and videos using computational methods, has several applications within the healthcare sector. These include improving pathology detection and disease diagnosis, enhancing medical image quality, and improving surgical precision. However, it can go beyond diagnostics and into the realm of preventive medicine. By monitoring health indicators, computer vision can aid in providing personalized health alerts and identify disease markers early, enabling early intervention.

Computer vision is used by the Anura MagicMirror, a smart mirror device launched by NuraLogix that can analyze and assess vital health signs derived from a person's facial blood flow. Fitterfly used Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform to develop Klik, an AI feature that combines computer vision with its nutrition database to recognize, analyze, and break down food, and sync it to the user's Meal Diary on the Fitterfly App, thereby allowing people with diabetes and other non-communicable diseases to track and analyze their meals.

Additionally, cosmetic care tools developed by companies such as Haut.ai (Skin Atlas), Myavana (HairAI), Perfect Corp (Skincare Pro Aesthetic Simulator), and Unilever (Beauty Hub PRO) use computer vision to analyze skin and hair and provide care recommendations.

Notable use cases of technology across Prevention and wellness

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If you like what you read here, you can download the full report here. To learn more about how SPEEDA Edge can help your company stay ahead of the healthtech curve, contact us for a personalized demo.

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