The future of health:

High costs and macro pressures on Canada's health care system have caused a decline in patient care. The cure? A prescription for a digital recovery, focused on people, wellness, and prevention.

The Canadian health care system faces unprecedented pressures from macro forces, like aging populations, health inequities, workforce constraints, and skyrocketing costs across the ecosystem. Canada has the most expensive universal-access health care system in the OECD, yet its performance is modest to poor compared to its peers. Currently, a reactive approach to health care spending is seeing 80% allocated to treating sickness¹.

Today, we’re seeing increased shifts toward more preventative and proactive care in a new system that prioritizes holistic well-being.

45% of healthcare investments by 2040 are aligned to proactive, preventative, and predictive interventions, compared to 30% today¹

But to make a successful transition, both traditional and unexpected players across the entire health care system have critical, unique roles to play.

The traditional players:

• Governments
• Clinicians
• Private insurers
• Biopharma and medtech

Unexpected players in the future of health:

• Startups and health tech
• Retail tech, big tech, telco

The good news? A brighter, future of health doesn’t have to wait for large, sweeping policies or funding model reforms to transpire. No matter the role you play in the health care system, you can start making daily strides toward a more proactive system today.

Here’s how.

Governments: Address budget constraints with wellness and AI

Governments must make tough decisions allocating healthcare funds amidst budget pressures from:

• Rising burden of disease: 1/3 of health expenditures are spent on various chronic conditions and mental health disorders. Over 5 million people reported a mood, anxiety, or substance use disorder in 2022¹.
• Aging populations: The population of people aged 65 or older will jump from 16.2% in 2018 to 23.4% in 2040¹.
• Long-term pandemic repercussions: Hospitals continue to recover from exacerbated costs from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fortunately, we’re already seeing that a focus on social care and wellness can reduce the burden of treatment costs. For example, the City of Toronto and the University Health Network (UHN) launched the Social Medicine Supportive Housing Initiative², which promotes well-being through secure housing.

AI technology investments can assist in budget forecasting and financial strategy, but might require collaboration from new partnerships across the ecosystem. For example, the CAN Health Network partners with various companies and health organizations to reduce procurement barriers and introduce new technologies for preventative care.

Actions governments can take today:

• Identify more opportunities to improve housing as a natural precursor to better health outcomes
• Nurture partnerships to spearhead new technologies that drive preventative care and wellness
• Decentralize data to inform both investment strategies and patient care plans

Clinicians and delivery organizations: Support your people and patients with AI productivity gains and personalized care

Clinicians and hospitals have long faced poor patient service delivery and staffing challenges from overcapacity and legacy systems:

• Staff burnout at capacity: Health staff vacancies have quadrupled from 2015 to 2023, due to both hospital overcapacity of patients, as well as too much time spent on tasks outside patient care¹.
• Poor patient experience: Long wait times and outdated service models cause 41% of Canadians to experience difficulties accessing key health services¹.
• Fragmented care: Sick treatment doesn’t treat the whole person or consider social or other holistic determinants.

A solution to both staff burnout and poor patient experience is investing in technology to provide better access to care. One example is to leverage AI for both administrative workflows and patient care; indeed, AI breast cancer screenings can reduce workload by 70%.

The British Columbia Health Authority introduced a digital front door (DFD) and digital twin to divert 550 out of 2,500 patients from the emergency rooms. Similarly, Shoppers Drug Mart and the University of Alberta plan to open 44 pharmacy-led primacy care clinics to reduce hospital capacity and expand care to patients.

A newly developed AI program, CHARTWatch, takes a holistic approach to care by predicting changes in patients’ clinical states to reduce adverse events. The program contributed to a 26% reduction in palliative deaths at Toronto’s St. Michael’s hospital.

Actions clinicians can take today:

• Expand primary care beyond hospitals to reduce overcapacity
• Increase personalized, virtual care access to patients
• Embrace AI in hospital workflows to reduce staff burnout

Private insurers: Revamp the client experience with data ubiquity and personalization

Insurers face similar complaints as hospitals and clinicians do when it comes to patient experience. For example, generic product offerings don’t offer enough flexibility to personalize or visualize consumer health behaviours:

The solution for insurers is a technology update that prioritizes wellness. For example, Manulife partnered with health tech company League to gamify digital health offerings, where members would earn Aeroplan points for engaging in healthy behaviours --- a win-win for wellness and engaging customer experience. Similarly, GreenShield partnered with health platform Maple to desilo health data and integrate insurance benefits with virtual care access.

Actions insurers can take today:

• Source feedback from your customers about ways to improve the claims process and boost transparency about your products
• Integrate patient data with other health ecosystem partners to offer more tailored services

Biopharma & medtech companies: Leverage cutting-edge capabilities and resources to drive partnerships and health innovations

Biopharma and medtech companies can leverage bigger budgets for advanced technology innovation. But they struggle to maximize the impact of those innovations without the right partnerships and collaboration:

• Closed research ecosystem hinders collaboration: Biopharma companies must pay and wait for external access to health care expertise and consulting.
• Siloed patient data from other health care players: Limited access to abundant, patient data is a missed opportunity to inform new health products and gain a holistic view of the patient.
• Limited direct-to-consumer channels: Biopharma companies don’t have deep connections with consumers and might miss out on valuable data and feedback.

Limited access to specialist physicians hurts everyone in the ecosystem. Pharma’s learnings about unmet patient needs in entire disease areas can drive partnerships for innovative care delivery models that help holistic patient care.

Biopharma company UCB partnered with the University Health Network to scale more rheumatology clinics across Ontario to diagnose patients earlier, delay disease progression, and ultimately reduce capacity and financial pressure in our hospital. Similarly, Boehringer Ingelheim Canada and Alberta’s University Health Foundation partnered to improve primary care access in Alberta’s Indigenous communities by educating more members with emergency medical response training.

Similar partnerships across the health care system can benefit biopharma companies, as they can access low-cost expertise in the medical field to inform new products and services.

Actions biopharma companies can take today:

• Prioritize opportunities to foster relationships with other health care players in the ecosystem, like conferences, 1:1 meetings, and partnership proposals
• Inform new products with data and analytics from patient data and industry trends

Unexpected players in the future of health: Address unmet needs with creative business models and alliances

As emergent entrants in the health care field, health startups, big tech, and telco companies can develop tailored products and models to capture new customers.

Following the trend of the other players, personalization and enhanced patient experience remain common denominators for success. Vancouver-based WELL Health Technologies leveraged various acquisitions to create its Longevity Wellness+ program, an omnichannel patient and virtual services ecosystem that saw a 30% increase in patient interactions from 2022 and 2023.

Microsoft Azure launched Microsoft Cloud for health care in 2020, along with Azure Health Data Services in 2022. They continued with Microsoft Fabric, a health analytics platform adopted worldwide, including by the Ontario Workers Network.

Actions emerging entrants can take today:

• Foster relationships with clinicians for data and knowledge exchange to understand patient needs
• Tailor products to evolving patient expectations and gaps identified by other health care players
• Consult with health care sector experts to identify opportunities for health care specific products

Continue the conversation

We’ve seen organizations devote significant spend to sick care, and the test results are in: it doesn’t work. The cure for our overburdened health care system isn't reactive treatment, it’s a preventative focus on well-being.

A collaborative approach from governments, clinicians, insurers, and biopharma anchor on the following goals to transition the health care system:

• Support the workforce
• Improve public and population health
• Achieve health equity
• Reduce spend on sickness
• Enhance patient experience

Ready to write your organization a prescription for change? We’re here to help.

End Notes:

1. Deloitte Canada, “The future of health in Canada: Healthcare reimagined,” Published April 4, 2024.
2. City of Toronto, “City of Toronto, University Health Network, United Way Greater Toronto and Fred Victor launch Canada’s first social medicine supportive housing development,” Published October 3, 2024