What’s Next for Healthcare Systems?

If you haven’t seen a doctor in-person since the outbreak of Covid-19, you’re not alone. Care on Demand, is one of four societal trends identified in Aveint’s ColorForward 2022 and it notes  that healthcare around the world is not only a hugely important issue but is also a field that is changing dramatically and very quickly. This annual color forecasting guide for the plastics industry connects stories like this one with a palette of colors that can be expected to influence consumers in the next few years. 

Changing healthcare landscape 
The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on the weaknesses in the existing system and heightened stress among healthcare workers and patients alike, a situation that is likely to linger and remain a part of our lives into 2022 and beyond. The pandemic has also hastened the acceptance of tele-medicine, where patients meet with their doctors remotely by telephone or Internet, avoiding contact and potential infection during the current pandemic, and also efficiently bringing good healthcare to remote populations. 

By 2022, the Avient forecasters believe, we will begin to see artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics becoming established parts of the healthcare landscape. AI will be especially important in making sense of the massive amounts of data being accumulated about patients and their medical issues, and then developing a system of medicine that is more focused on prevention of disease than on treatment. There is also considerable evidence that there will soon be a massive shortage of doctors and other healthcare workers and that robotics, while not actually delivering treatment, will be invaluable in assisting in patient care. Thus, healthcare issues, positive and negative, can be expected weigh heavily on the minds and emotions of consumers by 2022. 

The colors
In the Care on Demand palette is a bluish mint metallic color called Bye-bye pills and it represents the future of telemedicine. The Greek word for ‘duality’ is δυαδικότητα (pronounced dya di kó ti̱ta) and so that is the name chosen for an interferential color which -- depending on the angle at which it is viewed -- actually looks yellow (representing the desire for the human touch) or blue (symbolizing advancing medical technology). The Pink Pamper is, logically, a soft, soothing pink representing the care that is delivered in a medical setting. It is actually rendered in a polymer infused with cellulose so it also has visible striations on the surface. Next, a transparent, slight pearlescent blue turquoise, called Dr. Preneur, stands for the growing entrepreneurship of physicians who are getting more involved in the commercial side of medicine. And last comes a dark navy blue, which is somewhat transparent with reflective particles. Named 81G F0UR 411, it acknowledges growing concern about the heavy investment in healthcare by the so-called Big Four tech companies… Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook.

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