Category: Healthcare IT

Healthcare has been in the eye of the digital storm for a while now. No other industry has undergone as much change over the last few decades as healthcare.  

The promise of digital transformation is making healthcare reliable and easy for everyone involved. And, the good news is that it is being fulfilled at an incredible pace now — one of the few silver linings to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone — from the masses to the governments — has witnessed the power of the digital first hand. And, while the digitization of healthcare has been an ongoing process for quite some time, it has lately revealed its benefits more strongly than ever before. 

The widespread adoption of digital healthcare IT solutions and services — although still far behind the ideal — is poised to be a win-win situation for everyone in the near future. Read on to find out how it works out for the best for both the consumers and the providers of healthcare alike.   

 

The What and Why of Digital Healthcare

Before the development of the internet, computers were limited to the hands of a few experts and enthusiasts. The primary uses of large industrial computers were to perform complex calculations while individual enthusiasts would use them to become a part of rising technology.

The advent of the internet, however, changed the ballgame completely. We could now use computers to exchange information through email, live chat, and message boards. The era of smartphones and consistent increase in internet speeds worldwide made features like video calling accessible to the masses. This has spurred digital healthcare practices like Telemedicine, doctor app, and medicine delivery app which have enabled patients and doctors to communicate without the need for physical travel.

In the last decade or so, the fields of medicine have begun leveraging these technologies to provide affordable access to healthcare wherever possible. As recently as 2019, the digital healthcare market around the globe exceeded 170 billion U.S dollars and is growing at a robust rate of 25% CAGR.  

 

Ushering Into a New Era of Healthcare Access

Patients looking to get world-class healthcare services do not necessarily need to step out of their homes. You can’t just schedule an appointment through Digital healthcare services, but engage in a consultation with your doctor no matter the distance. While a few decades ago, you had to travel far and wide to get world-class medical assistance, it is now available at the touch of a button.

Patients with chronic or multiple health conditions can keep consistent contact with caregivers and healthcare providers, which can be life-saving in many situations. 

Healthcare tech products and services have widened their reach for doctors and healthcare providers like never before. With digital applications, they can provide consultations online and keep meticulous records of patients with ease. The history of each patient’s medical conditions, treatments administered, and other critically relevant data can be recorded, shared, and studied without the need to maintain heaps of files. 

 

The Right Technology 

While digital healthcare technologies were already growing steadily, the pandemic accelerated their growth rapidly. From the patients and doctors to the paramedics and government agencies, all have recently witnessed how transformative healthcare software solutions and services can be.

 

What it Means for Patients 

Digital health tools like Telemedicine software are game-changers for public health in that it provides fast and affordable healthcare access to anyone seeking it. No matter where you are, all you need is a device and an active internet connection.

Despite massive data and predictive models, thinkers, institutions, and governments could not predict the COVID pandemic and its after-effects. With early diagnosis and rapid consultation, telemedicine has saved countless lives in these tough times and promises to do so in the years to come. 

 

What it Means for Healthcare Professionals 

With easy access to doctors, healthcare products and services hold tremendous potential, particularly for lower-income countries. Countries such as Brazil and Nigeria have begun reaping the benefits from this already, with AI-powered software that diagnoses diseases early on, letting doctors intervene as early as possible. 

While patients can avoid the bottlenecks that reduce their access to quality healthcare, healthcare professionals can make sure their services can save more patients than ever.

 

What it Means for Healthcare Institutions 

Recent developments have proven that the time for adopting telemedicine software is better than ever. Data suggest that while less than 15% of consumers preferred using telemedicine in 2019, over 75% are highly likely to use these services from now on, a staggering 38-times growth in just two years. 

While this favorable stance from customers may be attributed to the COVID-led restrictions and the subsequent cancellation of in-person doctor appointments, it is noteworthy that this survey reports 74% of customers reported a high level of satisfaction using digital healthcare services. 

 

Areas of Challenge and Opportunity 

While digital healthcare is full of promises, it’s not without its own set of challenges. The results of a recent survey show that the top three roadblocks to the adoption of digital health tools are cost, data security and privacy concerns, and lack of integration with the existing systems.  

If we are to harness the true potential of digital healthcare, we need to tackle these challenges head-on. Digital health sponsorships and better funding practices can encourage health facilities to transition. 

Regional or national databases that secure the information and medical history of individuals from falling into the wrong hands are non-existent in developing countries and need to be worked upon. We need stronger laws and regulations to be put in place to ensure data security and patient privacy, but specific to the local needs. 

High-speed and reliable internet services that provide the basic infrastructure to healthcare still need to be developed in low-income countries. 

Health trackers and wearable variable devices have come far from being bulky professional-only devices but still constant improvement in their accuracy and range of expertise. Technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence can make advanced healthcare more scalable and mass adoption easily achievable. 

While efforts in all these areas have gained momentum, we are not there yet. We still have a long way to go before telemedicine and other digital health technologies become truly transformative for healthcare consumers and providers. With private and public sectors working hand in hand to achieve this goal, the future can be full of positive developments. 

 

EMed HealthTech is doing its bit in helping accelerate this development through its enterprise health app and software applications, telemedicine software, medicine delivery app, doctor application, healthcare ERP and other custom solutions that help healthcare providers connect with patients. 

Whether you are a local clinic or a large multinational healthcare brand, our tailored software solutions can help you explore the untapped potential of this massive market. 

The role of IT in healthcare has grown significantly in recent years, as the advancement of technology has helped streamline the healthcare industry, which has benefitted patients and providers alike. But what is the role of technology in patient care? Does it have any positive impact on patient experience? Let’s take a look at how technology has advanced patient care.

When we talk about patient care, there are many factors that we have to take into consideration. Patient care is at a critical juncture today: wherein modern technologies are now replacing traditional practices to make healthcare more accessible and advanced.

While the adoption of IT solutions in healthcare is picking up the pace to improve patient care, it is essential to look at how exactly they improve patient care.

The need for Healthcare Information Technology (HIT):

Traditional health care consisted of doing everything manually and mostly on paper. And most of the healthcare infrastructure was centered in the urban areas, which increased the disparity between healthcare of urban and rural residents. In addition, there were many roadblocks for rural patients.

The use of IT in healthcare has been termed Healthcare Information Technology (HIT). Let us now learn more about what HIT is, how it benefits healthcare as a whole, and how it improves the quality of patient care.

Let’s face it: Patients find it difficult to remember to take medicines on time, store their medicine orders securely, refill their medicine orders on time, keep their medical records discretely, and many more. Healthcare IT technologies provide convenient solutions to all these problems. How? Let us address them one by one.

How do advanced Healthcare IT Solutions impact patient care?

1. Accurate and Accessible Documentation: It is no secret that healthcare involves heavy documentation of critical data with high-risk mix-ups. Healthcare data is often written on paper, including patient information, lab results, medical records, medicine orders, and medication lists. Apart from human errors, this data is at risk of being stolen or accessed by some unauthorized person. Furthermore, patients find handwritten information harder to decipher and often carries the risk of transcription errors.

Electronic documentation provides a reliable and accurate method of storing and distributing such data securely. But how does it improve the accessibility of such data?

HITs consist of advanced digital data collection and management platforms, commonly known as Electronic Record Management Tools. They enable healthcare providers to send and access patient data electronically and patients to submit, edit and access their data from anywhere.

2. Streamlines Critical Processes: When IT solutions automate your routine repeated tasks, such as online booking, data entry, and other administrative tasks, you can now utilize your time in doing other quality work and divert resources to make the patient experience more pleasing.
3. Telemedicine: Telemedicine solves two fundamental problems of healthcare—unavailability of doctors in rural areas and long traveling for doctor consultation.

Telemedicine/doctor app enables patients to get virtual doctor consultation irrespective of their location, and additionally, they don’t have to travel for a visit also. This increases the productivity of everyone involved. This is a boon for people residing in distant regions and for people with limited mobility.

4. IoT and Wearables: The Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices and sensors empower patients to share their real-time health conditions like blood pressure level with the doctor. They can also alert doctors instantly in emergencies like heart attacks and strokes, which boosts patients’ chances of survival.
5. Personalized Medical Advice: AI can be trained on the vast amount of data gathered by various smart devices.

As per a report published by the World Health Organization (WHO), “The Health Information System collects data from the health sector and other relevant sectors, analyses the data and ensures their overall quality, relevance and timeliness, and converts data into information for health-related decision-making.”

Such data can provide personalized, immediate medical advice to the patients by understanding their health conditions. This may come in handy when there’s an unavailability of doctors.

1. Preventive Healthcare: Smart wearable devices can gather data about patient conditions, allowing doctors to analyze them and take preventive steps.
2. Secure Medicine Order Storage: One of the main drawbacks of traditional healthcare infrastructure was that patients needed to keep all their medicine orders securely. And if one of the medicine orders gets lost, they have to face many hurdles. EMR (Electronic Medical Records) store all the patient records and doctor notes securely and enable patients to access their data from any authorized device. The latest addition to keeping health data secure is Blockchain. It forms an unbreakable network to keep patient data decentralized and transparent.
3. Pill and Refill Reminder: Many digital health solutions provide pill reminders to patients via push notifications, texts, or emails. This way, patients never forget to take their medications on time. Furthermore, patients often forget to refill their medicines. To address this, healthcare apps like doctor applications, medicine delivery apps, hospital apps remind patients to refill their medications in advance.
4. Appointment Booking: Earlier, patients had to waste a reasonable amount of time just waiting in lines, and even that didn’t ensure them a guaranteed appointment. Even when patients just need to go for routine checkups, they have to wait for hours. Now with an online appointment booking facility, the patients do not need to wait in long queues for hours to book an appointment. HITs enable patients to book an appointment at their preferred slot and travel to the clinic at that particular time.
5. Patient Education: Modern technologies like AR and VR boost patient engagement by allowing them to visualize medical procedures via 3D models. In limited cases, it even allows doctors to preview the effect of the treatment. It improves communication between doctors and patients and allows doctors to choose the best treatment for the patient.

Conclusion: Today, various technologies, especially IT, have massively improved healthcare delivery by streamlining processes, reducing operational costs, and increasing efficiency. Thus raising the standard of healthcare. The modern look of healthcare not only benefits the patients, but the society as a whole.

I hope you now understand the importance of healthcare IT solutions in patient care. You can get in touch with us if you want to know how we can help you digitize your healthcare operations.