You are a critical care Intensivist having just finished your rounds in one ICU and on your way to the next. And the nurse calls you and informs that one of your patient is going critical - and you receive a video feed showing the patient and the nurse, an ECG chart and complete patient parameters on a mobile software application and quickly you issue instructions and help save that life - this is not wishful thinking, this is real today. Using the power of digital, we are now in a position to connect and link multiple domains, store, retrieve and intelligently use data - even in the world of medicine.
Digital technology and connectivity has revolutionized the way we live. The coming revolution will result from the need of replacing disconnected objects with connected ones, and making these objects ever more intelligent, and aware of their surroundings (using sensors). The resulting network promises to create disruptive business models.
Remote Monitoring
Let us delve a bit deeper into the Continuum of Care. There is an increasing awareness about personal health. Devices are now available in the wellness space which help you monitor your parameters like heart rate, blood pressure, steps taken, calorie inputs, calories burnt and the like. These help you to manage your life better. And then there is a cycle for professional care. In case of sickness, you get admitted to hospitals where care is dispensed. And the wellness data, now available helps us manage the hospital care a lot better than what it would have otherwise been. Your trends are now available to doctors - anywhere, anytime, thanks to the data cloud. Once back from hospital, you now have the home care domain which focuses on the recovery phase and advice you on the medications to be taken, the exercise regimen to be followed, the calories to be consumed, motivational videos and consultancies, interaction and sharing of feedback from peer groups, friends and relations aka social media, the list and the options are endless.
Advances in connected healthcare are happening around multiple axes: Convergence of domains - healthcare, telecommunications, IT, analytics, security; evolution of business models: co-pay, pay per use, capex, opex, risk & profit sharing; consortium of new players: IBM, Cisco, HP, Philips, GE, Siemens.
And again, this is new to the world. There is a lot of learning in forming and executing on these new relationships, operating models and driving financial viability which in turn drives sustainable growth. In short, we are now entering an era where you will be able to monitor from the time you are born to the growing stages, middle life, through to your old age. The amount of data which would get generated would be invaluable and the decision support that could be built on it can change the future of mankind. That is the power of big data and the analytics around it.
If we take healthcare in specific, there are research studies which tell us that the remote patient monitoring is growing with a CAGR of 25%. The starting point for the convergence of Healthcare and the digital world is represented by our smartphones which are not only connected to the net, but are also going to be ever more enriched with applications and sensors, and used by people as valuable tools for our Health. One of the finest examples is the remote monitoring solution of ICU patients that brings together an array of diagnostic equipment, software, computers and handheld devices to provide an ambulance-to-patient bed link that its executives describe as an 'Intellihospital.' "Like the monitoring process in a traffic control room, an eICU can monitor patients in different hospitals 24x7 and makes key interventions at the right time.
Another example is an ambulance device that can take an ECG chart, monitor blood pressure and transmit it over mobile handsets to hospitals, where doctors can be ready with the right solution before the patient arrives as also proactively plan for their treatment.
Let's look at the mother and child care segment. As per UN Sustainable Development Goals (earlier Millennium Development Goals 4&5), the aim is to reduce maternal mortality by a third as also neonatal deaths. Mobility has a great role to play. One such solution deployed in the rural areas of Manipal, is making rural health services more accessible, eco-friendly and paperless. This software helps in healthcare data collection of pregnant mothers & neonates on mobile phones. Dr Veena G Kamath, head of the department of community medicine, KMC, opines that earlier, nurses of RMCWH used to visit houses in villages and collect healthcare data, including weight of babies, vaccinations for babies, blood pressure of mothers and other health status of mothers and babies. "During their visits, nurses used to note down the data on paper and later upload to the server of Kasturba Medical College via internet-enabled computers from RMCWH. The new software will save time and help nurses in collecting accurate data using mobiles. Nurses can collect healthcare data from houses in remote villages and upload it directly to the server within minutes through internet-enabled mobile phones," says Dr Veena. Till date, it has already touched thousands of lives in a positive manner.
The whole process of taking care of patients, have to be "inclusive" and designed in a completely new way, based on user experience and cutting edge design approach.
Appropriate analysis and visualizations, typical of Web 2.0, should be a constant in the solution provided to any kind of users. Data and information generated by medical appliances - personal, wearable or geographically distant from major hospitals - carry with them the need to establish remote services which are secure, but also open and interoperable if necessary.
Another important factor in connected healthcare is - A "Health Cloud". This is an asset that will be a primary need for hospitals as well as for medical device manufacturers (and a service for patients). While the "Cloud technology" has its own set of challenges, it brings forth immense benefits to its users. On-demand access of data coupled with device independence becomes a reality. Sharing / collaboration of device and data is taken to a very different level thanks to the standardization that is becoming a norm in this industry. According to available data, 88 percent of health care organizations that have implemented cloud technologies have saved, on average, 20 percent of their health care costs.
So how will 2025 look like?
Today, it is possible for us to go to an ATM in any corner of the world and draw money. Imagine a situation where you go to a remote town in the middle of India and you feel unwell. You pull out your Medical Card (aka Health ATM), give it to a doctor who swipes the card, you key in your access code and lo and behold - your entire health history is accessible to him. It has your trends on heart rate, blood pressure, glucose, lipids, the medications you take, the tests you have undergone and the results thereof and the drugs you are allergic to …… What a world would that be? How confident would a physician be in diagnosing and treating you? The possibilities are what you dream!
Guest Author
Ravi Ramaswamy is a senior director at Philips Healthcare
