From data mining to telemedicine, wearables, remote control, “smart” pills, and artificial intelligence, the digital revolution has already had a huge effect on health care products and processes. Digital technologies are enabling a new frontier in medical treatment, a more integrated health-care system that prioritizes patient-centricity, cost-effectiveness, and disease self-management. This wave of innovation has resulted in the development of innovative hybrid or one-of-a-kind products that use digital capabilities to supplement or replace more traditional types of health care intervention.

Wearables

Apple and Alphabet are extending their wearable technology to include tasks including calculating oxygen levels in the blood or irregular heart rhythms, with an eye toward the health-monitoring industry. In the healthcare sector, disruptive technology like this faces particular challenges. The FDA recognizes the opportunities and challenges of digital health technology innovation and has collaborated with a group of industry leaders from the medical device and technology industries to develop a standardized mechanism for safely providing these powerful tools to the public.

Software

One of the outcomes of the digital revolution in the medical device industry is a software as a medical device (SaMD). There are standalone computer programs, such as software, that are used in disease prevention, diagnosis, care, control, or management. They differ from software that is embedded in or central to medical devices, as well as software that is used in the manufacturing or servicing of such devices. Digital therapeutics is one form of SaMD that is gaining a lot of traction in the industry.

AI in Healthcare

Artificial intelligence allows patients’, doctors’, and hospital administrators’ lives simpler by automating tasks that humans can usually perform in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. The AI market, which was estimated at around $600 million in 2014 and is expected to hit $150 billion by 2026, is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. In the field of medicine, AI has a plethora of applications. AI has been a boon to the healthcare industry, whether it’s being used to discover ties between genetic codes, power surgical robots, or even improve hospital productivity. Whether it’s used to find new links between genetic codes or to drive surgery-assisting robots, artificial intelligence is reinventing — and reinvigorating — modern healthcare through machines that can predict, comprehend, learn and act.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine has been slowly growing in popularity over the last decade, but the pandemic has increased its acceptance. Patients can no longer accept long wait times if they assume their treatment is as good as or better than a regular in-person visit, all from the comfort of their own home. In all aspects of high-quality healthcare, telehealth would redefine patient standards. Telemedicine can become an effective preventative care choice. The availability of specialists would become the norm, reducing hospital wait times. Telehealth would become more widely accepted as a trend in the standard of care.

Because of the seriousness and suddenness of the COVID-19 emergency, we’ve had to make several adjustments to the way we provide treatment. The Food and Drug Administration has been relieved of red tape that previously delayed the production of research and therapies. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have provided waivers that enable medical practitioners to be licensed in several states and reimbursement for telehealth services. COVID-19 has ignited a global crisis, but it has also sparked New Frontier in Medical Treatment. We are driving reforms around the country that will provide quality health coverage for everybody after this nightmare is over.