Trend study: The Future of Health Insurance
New trend study describes the transformation of traditional health insurance companies into predictive health promoters through 2030
> The traditional stakeholder structure in the health market will undergo major upheaval over the next few years thanks to the progressive individualization of medicine and the new opportunities that will emerge through digitalization.
> Patients and policy holders will become health customers. They will expect access to the precise and differentiated assessment of their current and future state of health at all times.
> Health is not a product of change: The health customers of the future will measure provider performance based on predictive competence – the decisive prerequisite for the lucrative and meaningful business models of tomorrow.
> No longer the individual medical professional, but intelligent software and neural networks will translate customer health data into concrete action recommendations – not only for policy holders, but for healthcare professionals, pharmacists, the food industry ...
> Tomorrow's health promoters will increasingly include health / performance optimization and life-extending services in their portfolios.
> The revolution has already begun: The first attackers have already entered the market and are shifting the traditional operating principle of the market onto an entirely new foundation.
> Health insurance providers will become predictive health promoters. As long as the solidarity principle facilitates this in the future, it will continue to remain a sustainable foundation for the health insurance of the future.
In cooperation with AOK PLUS, trend researchers from 2b AHEAD draw upon countless collaborated expert interviews and analyses to give a valid look at the future of the health insurance industry through 2030. One conclusion is very clear: The conventional healthcare sector is in danger of being overtaken by pioneering digital attackers.
"The health industry is about to experience a foundation-shifting innovation boost" according to Kai Gondlach, Senior Researcher at 2b AHEAD and co-author of this study. "The message for providers is clear: Change roles or become irrelevant."
As digital transformation progresses, health will increasingly become a configurable good. Today's insurer bonus programs and largely generic health-promoting measures will soon give way to empirically-based, personalized recommendations for targeted preventive care compiled from the countless sensors in the customer's surroundings – and inside the customer themselves.
"Health is not a matter of chance. The person who becomes ill in the future has chosen the wrong health promoter." Michael Carl, Managing Director of 2b AHEAD and study co-author.
Within the next few years, preventive medicine will also encompass genetic modification (CRISPR/Cas9) and above all individualized diet and medicine. The decisive foundation for successful preventive care will be the rapidly growing data stream customers will share in the interest of their own health with industry providers, who will translate this data into the most effective recommendations for the prevention of illness. Thus today's health insurance companies will become predictive health promoters.
The key to this transformation will be cross-channel, real-time digital communication built on the foundation of omnichannel management and highly automated internal processes. This in turn demands a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure for real-time data processing. The successful use of data will be a life-or-death question, and not only for insurers' business models: "The most common cause of death in Germany is quite probably data protection." – Prof. Arkadiusz Miernik, Senior Physician and Director of UroTech, University of Freiburg Medical Center and expert participant in this study.