Technological advancements have revolutionized every aspect of our life and the healthcare industry is not an exception. With technology as a catalyst, the healthcare sector is slowly shifting its paradigm from volume-based to value-based care. With time being the most critical factor, patient care needs to be highly efficient and convenient.
Here, let’s see how technology is sweeping the pharmaceutical domain with its latest trends, and benefiting both medical experts and patients.
Improved patient care through AI
The steady transformation from generic to individualized healthcare has enabled the industry to adopt technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. AI and machine learning both have come ahead of the hype with practical use-cases like that of image processing, especially in radiology and pathology. This technological onset is aimed not only at improving treatment methods but also enhance patient experiences at affordable costs.
The advent of personal health data stores
Patients will soon be able to take control and store their personal health and clinical data across their choice of apps in the cloud. Since May 2019, under the GDPR mandate, data controllers need to pass on the data to consumers and patients on-demand and in usable formats.
Apple has already rolled out HealthKit, and Microsoft is not too far behind in delivering the best patient care through HealthVault.
Analytics for in-house clinical data
Data analytics is a key source for extracting meaningful insights from patient data in order to drive various outcomes: precision-driven care and treatment, disease surveillance and preventive management, and development of more effective diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. The need is to focus on “small data” analytics than big data analytics to leverage existing data and improve clinical and operational processes.
Despite hurdles, virtual care is here to stay!
There are no second thoughts that virtual care like telehealth and remote patient monitoring are easing the life of patients. There are a few roadblocks for the adoption of these technologies that include issues with reimbursement, loopholes in regulation and monitoring, and haphazard clinical workflow. But since virtual care allows health systems to improve clinical outcomes at lower costs, there’s bound to be a rising demand for innovating digital health tools for patient empowerment and engagement.
Unlike other industries like finance, retail, etc. healthcare organizations lag quite far behind when it comes to cybersecurity standards. The healthcare industry saw an average of 32,000 intrusion attacks per day per organization in the US in 2017, compared to only 14,300 per organization in other industries. And that’s why cybersecurity should and will be a priority for healthcare, with health institutions looking to take all necessary steps to fill in the gap between healthcare cybersecurity standards and standards of other domains.
Technology will gradually revolutionize the way healthcare industry operates for a more efficient, minimized errors, and more seamless doctor-patient experience. Robust digital health innovations and continued policy changes in the healthcare sector are going to bring significant changes in health IT infrastructure and begin a new era of personalized healthcare ecosystem in the near future.
