The pandemic has made us acutely aware of the fragility of our social fabric in the absence of access to healthcare. We can say the same about healthcare providers regarding the fragility of their services due to their lag in digital transformation.
While some were quick to adapt, many still struggle—overwhelmed by the plethora of ideas and approaches available.
We have decided to narrow that by focusing on the biggest trends in the industry taken from the experience with the pandemic—preventive and personalized care through digital transformation.
Digitization naturally lends itself to data collection. When healthcare organizations digitize their services, they will be able to collect a wealth of patient and practice data. As the type and amount of interlocking services that are digitized increases, there will be an increase both in terms of size and complexity of the data.
Big, hard-to-parse data, however, is meaningless until we process it to derive meaningful insights. Custom structured data points are processed to deliver business intelligence that enables healthcare professionals to proactively lead with foresight.
Therefore, starting with digitization, then data collection followed by analytics and business intelligence, health professionals can predict, manage, and treat diseases instead of constantly reacting to problems.
IoT (Internet of things) are physical objects that use sensors to collect and transmit data with other devices and systems. In the medical sector, sometimes referred to as IoMT, they are patient-oriented medical devices and applications that gather, analyze, and transmit data to healthcare IT systems in real-time.
IoMTs, which include medical devices and wearables such as Apple Watch and Fitbit, enable patients and physicians to monitor vitals in real-time. The data collected through IoMTs is sent directly to the hospital’s EHR system. In combination with software applications such as Apple Health for patient insight, IoMT’s lend themselves to preventative medicine—significantly improving quality of care and patient experience.
Telehealth is likely the one aspect of healthcare digital transformation where by the pandemic was the catalytic event for its unprecedented adoption.
The need, combined with the encouragement of the federal government to healthcare providers to see patients via virtual appointments, led to the fastest adoption that was overdue.
Telehealth includes video visits, phone calls, and online communication. It also includes the collection, storing, and sharing of patient data (such as lab results) in a secure patient portal.
Used in combination with wearables, big data, and analytics to measure, record, track, and manage patient health, Telehealth is key in providing integrated healthcare.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are now being commonly used in the healthcare field as the way forward for delivering quality of care through fast and accurate diagnosis.
With the help of AI and machine learning, we are able to compute the massive dump of complex data collected through wearable medical devices, such as FitBit and the Apple Watch. The computed data is can then be beautifully visualized for human analysis and data-driven decisions.
AI and machine learning play a critical role in identifying and interpreting data patterns, such as from thousands of medical images, with masterful precision and speed, thereby improving the accuracy and speed of diagnosis.
Many find it hard to grasp that the Blockchain—the technology behind Bitcoin—will radically transform the way we store and manage electronic health records.
At its core, a blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger. It is a computerized database of transactions shared across a peer-to-peer network, as opposed to a centralized server managed by third-party institutions.
The decentralized network of computers verify and cryptographically register an immutable, unforgeable, and unhackable record. This ensures 100% accuracy, security, privacy, and trust while significantly cutting costs.
Touted as the next generation of the internet, it is a technology that will have the greatest impact on the planet in the coming decades; and healthcare organizations that understand and adopt it first stand to benefit significantly from it.
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