Prioritizing Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare Organizations
In the face of rapidly escalating healthcare expenditure, which reached $8.3 trillion globally in 2018, equating to around 10% of global GDP, innovative strategies are needed to make medical care more accessible for all.
Key strategies to lower overall healthcare system costs revolve around technology adoption, care delivery innovation, and policy improvements. Notable areas of focus include telemedicine, value-based care models, AI-driven diagnostics and predictive analytics, administrative simplification, and increased biosimilar drug use.
Telemedicine and digital health platforms are reducing costs by increasing access to care, decreasing unnecessary hospital visits, and supporting remote chronic disease management. By streamlining patient-provider interaction without the overhead of physical visits, telemedicine helps contain costs.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proving to be a game-changer in the healthcare sector. AI-powered diagnostics, such as deep learning for cancer detection, and predictive analytics identify high-risk patients early, reduce hospital readmissions, and improve resource allocation, directly reducing costs. AI also automates administrative tasks, enhancing efficiency for payers and providers.
Value-based care models, which shift from fee-for-service to outcomes-based payment, encourage providers to optimize patient outcomes and avoid costly interventions. This includes holistic patient-centered care, better clinician decision support, and empowering patients to engage with their health, reducing preventable complications and waste.
Adoption of biosimilars—lower-cost versions of biologics like Stelara and Humira—significantly deflates drug spending for health plans. Supporting infrastructure and fair reimbursement encourage provider and patient use, thus lowering pharmaceutical costs.
Administrative simplification and data integration are also crucial. Streamlined claims processing, data exchange platforms, and integrated pharmacy and care management reduce overhead and enable better cost-quality analytics. Automation and AI-driven claims reviews mitigate fraud, waste, and abuse that drive excess spending.
Examples of companies and solutions involved include health IT and telemedicine platforms, AI companies specializing in medical imaging diagnostics and predictive healthcare analytics, biosimilar manufacturers, insurers and payers deploying AI and automation technologies, and more.
The 2025 white paper on optimizing US healthcare synthesizes these approaches as crucial to sustainable reform, emphasizing practical deployment by healthcare leaders, policymakers, and technologists. The growing role of biosimilars and AI automation within health plans and providers is highlighted as critical cost-deflating innovations by PwC and Wolters Kluwer. Sermo's healthcare trends underscore AI’s rapid adoption as a transformative force across diagnostics and operational workflows.
Investing in companies specializing in healthcare innovations can potentially help lower overall system costs in the long run. These companies develop new treatment methods, devices, diagnostic tools, digital health services, and services that could contribute to alleviating the pressure on healthcare systems. In many countries, including the US, healthcare expenditure is growing faster than GDP, making these innovative approaches and companies increasingly important.
- The integration of AI in healthcare, such as through AI-powered diagnostics and predictive analytics, can help lower costs by early identification of high-risk patients, reducing hospital readmissions, and improving resource allocation.
- Investing in companies that specialize in healthcare innovations, like those developing new treatment methods, digital health services, and biosimilars, may potentially help in long-term cost reduction for the overall healthcare system.
