The rapid digital transformation of healthcare is equipping individuals with tools to manage their health from home, reshaping patient care. Technologies such as AI-powered apps and remote monitoring devices are driving a shift toward preventative care, enabling clinicians to detect health issues earlier and intervene proactively.
As healthcare continues to evolve, digital solutions are proving essential in enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and ultimately empowering patients to take a more active role in their well-being, creating a more sustainable, patient-centered healthcare model.
Tools such as Bupa’s Blua, the healthcare company’s digital health app, enables users to monitor and manage their daily and long term health remotely from their fingertips. Bupa’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Anne Lepetit says Blua is part of a digital transformation of the healthcare system that mirrors a wider societal shift.
“We used to go to a retail store to buy things, but now we want to buy things on our smartphones and use home delivery,” explains Lepetit. “People want the same personalised experience with healthcare. We can give people the option of accessing treatment from home or in-person or a combination of both and improve access to care in countries where it can be difficult to book an appointment in person.”
Historically, the relationship between patient and clinician has been in-person, but research shows that attitudes are changing. A survey of 9,000 people by Ipsos revealed that three in four people across all ages are open to using digital healthcare technology to improve their health. This year, Bupa has delivered over 4.3 million virtual consultations on Blua across the UK, Spain, Australia and Poland. In Q1 this year, people aged over 60 attended over 118,000 virtual consultations, while customers aged 26–30 attended over 200,000.
At the heart of Bupa’s digital health transformation is a desire to promote a culture of prevention. For customers in Spain, Blua syncs with customers’ wearable devices so that their real-time health data is connected directly to a professional team of doctors, psychologists, nutritionists, personal trainers, or physiotherapists. Instead of waiting to fall sick before seeking medical help, warning signs and recommendations can be made long before a patient falls ill.
“We can use Blua’s technology to capture clinical data and also data from patients’ wearables and in some cases then use AI to analyse health trends,” says Lepetit. “Our experts can then review it and reach out to patients and advise them to change their diet, give them exercise advice or offer them the chance to book a virtual or in-person consultation with a doctor or mental health professional.”
AI is helping Bupa with early detection of skin cancer too. Ipsos’s research shows only 9% of people would immediately have a mole they were concerned about examined by a professional. However, when given the option of using an AI-powered app to examine the mole, that number jumps to 33%. In Spain, Bupa customers can upload a picture of a mole to Blua, which uses AI to compare it to thousands of other images of skin lesions to check for signs of malignancy. If the AI tool suspects that there is a cause for concern it will let the patient know to book a follow up appointment with a doctor.
But the evolution of remote care hasn’t always been smooth. Iain Hennessey is a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon and Clinical Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s Health Park. At the conference he told the story of a young girl called Lydia. She was born with gastroschisis, a rare condition that saw her intestines form outside of her body that required an operation to rebuild her entire abdominal wall.
“The operation and recovery required months of treatment and her mum wanted to be able to see and monitor Lydia remotely, while she was at home,” he says. “It was over eight years ago now, but we did try and set up a webcam and connect it to our internal Wi-Fi, but everything that could’ve gone wrong technically did. The clinicians were also worried about potential ethical issues if Lydia’s health deteriorated whilst her mum was watching via a webcam from home.”
Hennessey and his colleagues at Alder Hey have since used those learnings to inform the development of Alder Hey Anywhere, a new digital platform that aims to create a hospital of the future, combining physical and virtual treatment. To achieve this, the platform provides a shared point of access and patient care for families, children, young people, and clinicians to manage, treat, educate, and coordinate the delivery of their healthcare.
“Last Christmas, our cardiac surgeon was able to send several children home and use the platform to monitor them remotely,” says Hennessy. “Their recovery was aided, because their stress levels were lower being at home with their families.”
The integration of physical and mental health treatment is a key area of healthcare that is being enhanced by digital technology and remote care. Research shows that 30% of heart failure patients suffer from depression, which often leads to poorer quality of life and clinical outcomes. Clinicians and AI experts at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA have developed Xaia, an immersive therapy tool that uses a human-trained digital avatar to provide mental health therapy via an Apple Vision Pro headset.
In Spain, Bupa’s Blua app offers an AI powered mental health service called ‘Take Care of your Mind’. It tracks a raft of data points such as a daily questionnaire, exercise feedback, stress and sleep scores to analyse the customers’ mental health and uses AI to provide them with personalised content on how to manage it.
“We have a global mental health crisis, it’s important to anticipate problems before they arise,” says Lepetit. “Data such as stress levels can help us to anticipate a patient’s mental health and give them the tools to train their mental health like they do their muscles and prevent problems further down the line.”
For patients and clinicians, the rapid evolution of healthcare technology and remote care offers an exciting opportunity to prevent ill health and live happier, healthier and longer lives.
