Technology takes health care into the 21st century

BY DAVID RUBINSTEIN

Health care software system providers have been working for over a decade on modernizing and digitizing those systems, with data collection and sharing, and advances in electronic medical records (EMR) so far leading the way.

Yet it took a global pandemic of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease for the health care community to re-evaluate all that they do and how they do it.

There has been a rise in telehealth solutions, as patients often need to remain isolated from others not infected with COVID-19 and as hospitals are overwhelmed with a crush of people who need treatment from the disease. This has forced others recovering from surgeries, or who are on medical maintenance for chronic conditions, to get the treatments and services they need outside of traditional medical facilities.

A number of startups are entering the field, reimaging how surgical suites are run, how health insurance is delivered, and how hospitals can go mobile. These advances are changing the way the industry thinks about delivering health care.

For those who are living with lifetime conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, COPD and many others, the use of wearable devices — known in the industry as remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices — will expand greatly. One research firm predicts that 30 million patients in the United States alone will be using some sort of device by 2024. Devices such as implanted pacemakers and defibrillators send signals back to devices that collect the data 24/7 and trigger alerts when an event occurs. Think of the Internet of Things for health care.

The use of telehealth appointments, using technology such as FaceTime or Zoom, can keep patients connected to their physicians without having to leave their homes, and the use of telehealth already has grown to be about 40 times greater than it was pre-pandemic.

While record-sharing, data access and filling prescriptions electronically (to avoid the mistakes that occurred due to unreadable scripts written by doctors) were the low-hanging fruit, some areas seeing innovation include providing remote services to underserved communities, the creation of ‘smart hospitals’ that can offer virtual services, and the use of artificial intelligence in diagnosing such maladies as skin cancer and heart disease. Artificial intelligence can also be used to analyze data about how people use urgent care facilities, to seasonally adjust schedules and hours to reduce patient wait times, and to ensure they have the right amount of tests and other supplies to meet recurring demand.

These advances have already begun to optimize delivery of medical services and solutions around the globe. The goal is to bring health care to people who lack mobility to go to a medical facility, and to places where there are limited facilities or where none exist at all.

Innovators like some of those highlighted in this guidebook are helping to ease access to health care, through lower costs and more availability of services. We hope you find this most useful. :