Medtech vs healthtech, aren’t they the same? After the recent pandemic, technology has taken the world by storm. We now frequently hear new terminology used in connection with emerging industries, such as healthtech, MedTech, and biotech. This has been especially important during quarantine, as telehealth has become the preferred delivery option or, in some cases, the only option.
Startups and established providers engaged in virtual health projects to meet the rising demand. But what’s the deal with all these terms? If you assumed healthcare technology would just be health-tech, you should reconsider. Because different technologies are used in various sectors of the healthcare system – for example, organization, treatment, and pharmacy – the industry developed several types of technology. So, let’s decode all these different terms.
Companies like Theranos taught the world that MedTech has tremendous responsibility. While HealthTech products like the Apple Watch showed us that the potential is huge.
What is HealthTech
Healthtech is an umbrella term for the use of technology to improve care delivery, payment, and/or consumption. The primary purpose of healthtech is to improve overall care quality through increasing hospital productivity, getting new insights into drugs and treatments, or simply making healthcare more accessible.
The World Health Organization defines Health technology as the “application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of lives.”
Healthtech is all about practice management software. It assists administrators, doctors, and nurses keep everything organized: scheduling staff, scheduling appointments, billing administration, a database with patient information, and so on.
What is MedTech?
Although some people may use the terms interchangeably, Medtech, or medical technology, is a subset of Healthtech that includes therapeutic and diagnostic technology practitioners utilize. While Medtech concentrates on the devices and software, Healthtech consists of the devices as well as their applications.
Whereas healthtech focuses on operational improvements, MedTech refers to advancements in medical technology. Medtech advances medical diagnosis and treatment by enabling the creation of cutting-edge medical devices and processes. A great example of MedTech is the PCR rapid testing kits which have made it easier to test patients for the COVID-19 virus. This allowed early diagnosis and reduced the pandemic advancement.
That’s why we can easily say that MedTech is necessary to improve the patient’s quality of life.
Medtech vs. HealthTech: Differences
Now that we understand what each phrase means. Let’s dive deeper and acknowledge some key medtech vs. healthtech differences.
- Medtech primarily takes the form of equipment and tools and is utilized by doctors to improve hospital patient care.
- Healthtech is used for patients outside the hospital, except for practice management software. The most common forms are apps and wearable technology.
- The purpose of healthtech is to prevent, monitor, and for personal care.
- The purpose of medtech is for the treatment, diagnosis, and enhancing lives through artificial body parts.
- Healthtech is barely regulated, and a lot must be done.
- Medtech is quite regulated.
Healthtech helps healthcare providers manage more effective businesses and deliver services in various ways. This has been crucial during the pandemic since telemedicine has increasingly replaced other delivery methods—in some cases, becoming the only choice.
Medtech represented the latest medical research. Specialized equipment supports the procedures doctors and researchers use as they discover more effective ways to identify and treat medical diseases.
Healthtech and medtech use various enabling technologies since their goals are distinct. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the preferred technology for health and care delivery, although data and platform developers are investing more in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
Medtech vs. HealthTech: Similarities
The main similarity between medtech vs healthtech is that they both are technologies related to healthcare.
Diagnostic software is available to doctors and patients; however, patients are more familiar with it as a symptom checker. You can’t utilize a symptom checker as a patient, self-diagnose, and demand a prescription and medication. They are still distinct solutions with distinct goals. The ultimate goal is to understand if you need to see a doctor immediately and which specialist you should visit.
Doctors utilize diagnostic apps more as a knowledge base with a scientific approach; they use it as a reference and consider numerous options while aware of your medical history and lab findings. Whether diagnostic applications fall under medtech or healthtech is a very delicate line that is still unclear.
Monitoring is subject to the same rules. If a patient uses a pulse wearable at home, it is considered healthtech, but if it is used and monitored in a hospital, it is regarded as medical technology.
What About Other Healthcare Technologies?
Biotech: as you might have guessed, biotech is a technology based on biology, which means that it is created using live things and biological processes. Creating novel pharmaceuticals and predicting their effects on patients based on their cell information, genetic testing, and artificial tissue growth are the main goals of this industry. For instance, biotechnology is also used to make vaccines. Large biotech corporations created the COVID-19 vaccines.
Insurtech: describes modern insurance technology that enhances client satisfaction and streamlines insurance procedures. ‘Insurtechs’ are technology-driven businesses that have risen to the top of the market to serve increasingly tech-savvy customers and to take on more established insurance providers.
Femtech: in contrast to the others, it places less emphasis on the technology and more on the audience. Femtech describes programs, goods, and services that apply technology to better women’s health. From breast pumps to period-tracking apps to reproductive treatments, women’s sexual wellness, and even breast pumps.
Now that we’re clear on the terminology, you might wonder, “What’s the big deal?” Technology can considerably enhance the healthcare experience, making it popular with many of the actors in the healthcare ecosystem. Though there are undoubtedly numerous moral and practical factors to be considered, the transition is taking place.
How is Technology Transforming the Healthcare Industry?
All of these technologies revolutionize today’s healthcare, and they do so in various ways. Healthtech encourages self-care, medtech provides tools and equipment for better and more accurate diagnosis and treatment, and biotech develops effective medications for diseases that were once incurable. Technology can help healthcare practitioners by automating their administrative procedures. Administrative tasks can be automated with the correct tools, freeing nurses and doctors to spend more time with patients.
On the other hand, healthcare receivers (i.e., patients) now emphasize convenience more and are searching for more adaptable digital health solutions. Self-scheduling, remote health monitoring, and virtual routine checks are all possible with “digital-first” healthcare, which is convenient for patients and significantly less expensive for medical professionals.
These developments seem promising, and many are now in use or under development, but there is one vital point to keep in mind. Healthcare professionals and technology experts must collaborate in a balanced way for any of these technologies to be effective.
Information technology experts with a tech-centric viewpoint rarely understand the clinical process and wish to bring cutting-edge technologies. On the other hand, doctors are concerned with providing care and seek out technology that doesn’t interfere with their current workflow. IT professionals and caregivers should work together to create digital healthcare solutions.
Medtech and Healthtech Startups to Be on the Look For
Limbix provides digital therapeutics for adolescent mental health. With teenage depression and suicide on the rise. Still, access to appropriate treatment is hindered by lengthy waitlists, high out-of-pocket expenses for therapy, a lack of effective pharmaceutical choices, and the stigma associated with mental illness. They want to treat psychiatric problems using their SparkRX app.
On a single platform, Recuro‘s Digital Medical Home offers virtual care services like primary care, behavioral health, and urgent care, in addition to several add-on advantages like chronic care management, pharmacy, and care navigation.
A healthcare startup called Bloomlife creates wearable medical gadgets clinically approved for pregnant women to improve the quality of births. To help doctors anticipate and avoid pregnancy issues, Bloomlife has developed a wearable solution with data analytics. Bloomlife has recognized that there are significant and underappreciated challenges in prenatal healthcare.
Encellin is a San Francisco-based MedTech startup that develops a thin-film cell encapsulation device for cell-based treatments. A group of committed researchers focusing on developing next-generation medicines is the driving force behind Encellin’s medical breakthroughs. Encellin’s goal is to lessen the suffering of chronic patients, with Type 1 diabetes serving as the company’s main area of concentration.
Finally, we sometimes select clients here on Albusi to write whitepapers or business plan for them focused on the health tech industry. Check it out if you feel like this is something you need!
Meet The Author Of This Article
Hi! I’m Elsa
I’m a Growth Marketer focusing on growing B2B tech companies with a background in content creation and brand awareness.
I progressively work on brand, business, and team growth to help companies achieve their goals. I’m currently using content writing to share my own personal growth path and experience.