The healthcare services market is a $50 billion+ industry, and continues to grow exponentially without any signs of slowing down. However, daily consumers may not be aware of this market, as these firms provide services, advisement, and innovative technology to various healthcare organizations, rather than to patients directly. These healthcare organizations include large hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and even organized physician groups. Therefore, albeit the financially impressive size of this industry, the majority of the work and the significant value that these service firms provide is often shrouded behind the successes of these larger clients. The fact that much of this value occurs behind-the-scenes often delivers the false public perception that healthcare consulting is solely focused around the implementation of electronic health systems, when in reality, the industry entails a volume of other services as well. So, what do these firms do exactly, and why is this such a robust market?

Perhaps the biggest buzzword of this decade, digital health has become routine business for any professional services firm that is involved in healthcare.The U.S. Food & Drug Administration provides a wide scope when defining what fits within the category of digital health, including: mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalized medicine. Congruently, consulting companies have been quick to form entire verticals within their healthcare practices to focus on servicing these specific areas. And this is for good reason. The mobile health market is estimated to reach nearly $22 billion dollars by 2023. The healthcare artificial intelligence market is just as robust,and is projected to reach $19+ billion dollars by 2026. The telemedicine market boasts the most impressive figure, estimated to reach $130 billion by 2025.

The unifying factor between all of these different avenues remains the same: an extremely complex learning, implementation, and acclimation curve. Hospital systems and healthcare entities that do not want to fall behind on these new streams of market share, revenue, and patient populations have no choice but to engage professional services firms to learn how they can pivot their existing capabilities into these new ventures. Healthcare consulting firms will be able to provide this dedicated expertise.

Mobile and digital health tools are playing an increasing role in patient care.

While digital health is a massive growth opportunity, many healthcare entities are struggling to simply grow and maintain their fundamental and existing business areas. This is another area where healthcare consulting firms can often add value: expertise in market competitiveness, operational efficiency, and enterprise performance remains the bread and butter business for the vast majority of these firms. Global consulting firm Bain & Company discusses a valuable client story:a large pharmaceutical company engaged the consulting firm to cut costs while still tangibly maintaining and growing its product pipeline. Another case entailed a governmental entity engaging the Boston Consulting Group to transform its entire healthcare approach, working with the consulting firm to implement a system that emphasizes preventive care, high provider quality, and efficient care delivery models.

Much of the approach to all of these cases were similar. At the most basic level, industry experts from the consulting firms worked to understand the client needs, the requirements of the specific market consumers being served, the needs of the business entities, and any other outlying variables related to the issue at hand. Once these factors were understood and established, these experts worked with stakeholders to provide strategic recommendations and implement key frameworks for the clients to use moving forward.

SWOT Analysis: A commonly used tool to determine business and market strategy.

The common fallacy that many continue to contemplate: why hire outside consultants to resolve an internal problem? But the reality is that healthcare is too agile of a market, with political, economic, and consumer demands creating nearly instantaneous market shifts.Hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, physician groups, and other patient centered players have very different expertise areas, and should remain focused on the actual delivery of healthcare to the community. These entities cannot be expected to also have unlimited knowledge in operational efficiency and enterprise success. Rather, there is a need to delegate this expertise. This has paved the way for healthcare consulting to become an entire industry in and of itself, an industry which continues to work behind-the-scenes to contribute to and support a dynamic and robust healthcare ecosystem.

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The $50+ Billion Consulting Industry Supporting Healthcare That You May Not Know About - Forbes