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Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner and longtime tech analyst Mary Meeker released her annual Internet Trends Report Wednesday, and more than anything else, she pointed to a transformation of health thanks to big data and cloud computing.

The report, which is highly regarded in the tech community for its insights into trends and predictions, dedicated 31 pages to Healthcare @ The Digital Inflection Point and came up with some amazing stats about how technology and the Internet are transforming the sector.

At the top of the list, and perhaps the most remarkable number, is the way data is helping develop new medicines. Meeker said the digitization of medical data means that medical knowledge now doubles every 3.5 years versus doubling only every 50 years in 1950. Meeker added that the increased availability of health datais helping to accelerate clinical trials and encouraging collaboration with the scientific community as well.

That data accumulation, which Meeker describes as Digitally Native Health-Related Data Sets, comes from many sources, not only from medical establishments themselves but directly from consumers with the proliferation of wearable devices. According to her numbers, global wearable shipments hit 102 million in 2016, a figure five times higher than 2014, and a remarkable 25 percent of Americans now own a wearable device with more likely to buy in the future.

That data requires sharing, and some companies have earned more trust more than others in handling it. Google Inc. was trusted by 60 percent of those polled to handle health data, while Microsoft Corp. and Samsung Electronic Co. Ltd. were notfar behind at 56 percent and 54 percent, respectively. At the other end, consumers didnt trust Amazon.com Inc. and IBM Corp. nearly as much, with the companies only being trusted by 39 and 37 percent of people.

The surge in wearables has also been matched by a surge in health-related apps, with downloads hitting more than 1.2 billion in 2016. The types of apps were split across the health spectrum, with the most popular, fitness, sitting at 36 percent followed by disease and treatment at 24 percent and lifestyle and stress at 17 percent.

All the advances in healthcare technology wouldnt have been possible without growing cloud computing support. The cloud got its own section, with the report noting that Cloud Adoption = Reaching New Heights + Creating New Opportunities.

Although traditional data center spending still accounted for the majority of global information technology infrastructure spend in 2016, the type of spending is changing. Private and public cloud infrastructure accounted for 37 percent of total spending last year, versus 23 percent in 2013. Going forward, Meeker notes a survey that indicates that many enterprises are considering cloud adoption, with 57 percent of respondents saying they planned to run appson Amazon Web Services alone, with growing support for Microsofts Azure at 37 percent.

Heres a full copy of the report:

Read the rest here:
Mary Meeker: Healthcare technology is booming thanks to cloud computing and wearables - SiliconANGLE (blog)