Understanding Importance Of Technology In Healthcare

The advantages of modern technology have now touched almost all spheres of our life. However, healthcare is one arena that has probably achieved the most from technological innovations that we have witnessed in the last few decades. Be it decreasing nursing home abuse or the development of new treatment methods, technology continues to make our healthcare sector more systematic.

Dr Ashutosh Niranjan, Medical Superintendent, Sharda Hospital, Greater Noida affirms, "The adoption of technology in healthcare over the years has resulted in better diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Out of all the advantaged sectors from technology adoption, healthcare is supposedly the most significant one. It has upgraded the quality of life over time and has saved many lives."

"The utilisation of medical technology techniques and devices safeguards patient safety. There are alerts on medication, consultation & diagnosis reports, flags & reminders and the easier availability of patient data. Specifically, alerts can help someone adhere to particular treatments and schedules of treatment," Dr Ashutosh adds.

Some of the most notable advancements in healthcare caused by the recent technological innovations are:

Shift from paper-based records to Electronic Health Records

The replacement of paper-based records by Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has been an enormous game-changer in the healthcare sector. This development has not only made it possible for the patients to access their medical records easily but also ensured that critical errors are caught on time.

Here are few advantages of Electronic Health Records:

- EHRs sends automatic alerts to physicians about potential issues.

- They assist the procedure of advancing medical knowledge and developing treatment methods for health issues by proving key information to clinical researchers.

- Medical billers and coders probably have the most stressful job. Introduction of EHRs has made lives much easier for these healthcare workers.

Introduction of Big Data and the Cloud

Big data in the healthcare sector is intertwined with electronic health records. This term refers to a massive quantity of data that we can collect, process and utilise for analytics.

Baljit Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, simbo.ai, explains, "Population health analytics and policy decision making in real time with respect to healthcare are two significant fields which can experience a gigantic change with the roll out of Big Data."

Baljit further adds, "With the foray of big data, data mining & data analytics and digitized health records, the health department can have necessary insights into the health and wellbeing of its population."

It can help in fetching data like:

- What percentage of its population under 40 is healthy?

- What is the possible percentage of population suffering from lifestyle diseases?

- Malaria outbreak/Dengue alert in real time

- Data analytics can also assist the healthcare department issue alerts and figure out what diseases are likely to infect people in real time.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine and telehealth are important technology tools for the motive of two-way video consultations or healthcare data transmission. Telemedicine has proven its use in many areas such as cardiovascular healthcare.

Telemonitoring technology allows healthcare workers the freedom to monitor critical health signs, symptoms and even blood levels while being at a different location from the patient.

Mobile applications

Now-a-days, there is an mobile application for almost everything. Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing markets in terms of the development of mobile apps. The apps are designed to provide greater flexibility to patients and other stakeholders involved in the delivery of medical care.

"We will see a wider implementation of voice-based technology in the mobile apps and witness the fading of text driven mobile apps that needs manual intervention," says Baljit Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, simbo.ai.

Some of the fields where mobile health facilities are very useful are chronic care management, medical reference, diagnostics, mental health, medication management, fitness and weight loss, etc.