With technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, personalized applications, among many others waiting to be fully implemented in the healthcare sector, the future of the healthcare industry seems highly promising. Long gone are the days when the conventional mediums of technologies were being integrated into the healthcare industry or being iterated to ensure optimal outcomes.
Today, some of the most innovative minds, i.e., Healthcare App Developers of the tech world, have enabled healthcare organizations to transition to the new paradigm, which is a tech-led transformation in healthcare.
Now, just imagine how, in the next 10 or 20 years, will the exercise of providing medicine, health consultancy, and internal healthcare processes look – feeling uncertain about most of the things?
That’s the point!
The continuous evolution of the healthcare sector and recent scientific discoveries in which technology has played a critical role has made it really cloudy for individuals to predict the change.
High-tech body scans, holograms of doctors and nurses, virtual caretaking, and iPad in the hand of hospital staff comes to mind when speaking of drastic changes in healthcare.
Hence, it is safe to say that the entire care-delivery model is being positioned to change in the future aided by technologies.
So, amid the entire tech and healthcare-related uncertainty, assumptions, and imaginations, here are some of the concrete implementations of innovative technologies in healthcare taking root today.
The New Care-Delivery Model
The conventional visit model of the healthcare sector was retired decades ago, and today, doctors are more inclined towards seeing their patients more often.
And even though email consultation seems old-school, it’s still valid today, and the trend is spreading.
From consultancy to managing to payment procedures, literally, everything is being affected by the integration of technology. Hence, dramatic change is expected by the end of the deployment cycle.
Furthermore, technopreneurs are rethinking the traditional ways of performing various tasks in the healthcare sector. They’re constantly ideating and iterating new ways of carrying out old tasks, only this time, much faster and efficient.
The integration of technology is also expected to foster better communication, teamwork among doctors and other critical staff, patient behavior monitoring, and much more.
Virtual Meetings/Visits
Virtual meetings, online visits, and instant feedback are the new norm for the healthcare sector.
To put this theory into action, imaging a doctor seeing his/her patients via the internet using a webcam or a telephone.
The time spent on walking to every patient personally, starting a conversation, and physically checking the patient’s health status is minimized in this case while efficiency and flexibility are improved.
I believe this to be a very logical step, a leap towards a totally different norm where, for the betterment of the patients, the doctor’s experience and processes are being revolutionized.
Just imagine a world where the patients don’t have to wait for their specific or assigned doctor to arrive just to check on them.
Instead, they can simply tap into this CRM that the hospital has given them, select the doctor that is available and get medical consultancy online instantly while connected devices are continuously exchanging data, further improving the experience each time a doctor is connecting to a patient.
Or what if you got sick while you were driving back home and you’ve reached home, and you’re not in the mood to go to the hospital or what if you’re not feeling well while you’re in your office – all you have to do is look for a doctor online and get consultancy easily.
Medical Tricorder
Just when technologies were changing the face of the healthcare industry, Gadgets started playing their part amid the entire evolution.
Today, healthcare apps to wearables, IoT devices that seem unrealistic, and something out of sci-fi movies are changing the world.
These products backed by various technologies are capable of giving the users extremely accurate diagnostics of their health condition, identifying diseases, and even providing remedies or instructions on how to tackle certain health issues.
The gadgets that we have today are vital signs that the future of healthcare will be extremely advanced where simple and hand-held devices will be capable of scanning patients and instantly providing information to the doctor on their health condition.
The IoT integration in gadgets is making the devices even smarter as they’re able to continually exchange data between themselves, correcting whatever error was identified earlier and learning and adapting while being functional.
Some other purposes that the gadgets can serve are measuring blood-oxygen levels, measuring heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, sleep status, activity levels, and more.
Disrupting Drug Development
The cost of developing drugs/medicine is super-high, and the process is way too long. In fact, according to a recent study by Tufts, developing a new prescription medicine is estimated to cost $2.6 billion.
And even though the process involved research and development, workforce expenses, marketing, and more – still the cost is way too high given that it is just a pill meant to be swallowed.
Therefore, the pharmaceutical industry related to healthcare certainly needs disruption in terms of integrating technology to improve drug development so that the cost can be minimized.
Fortunately, there are companies like Deep Genomics, Turbine among several others are using technologies to automate and reinvent certain processes involved in the creation of new drugs.
For example, companies are using A.I to develop new drugs. The A.I is programmed to speed up the time it takes to develop the drug, calculate inefficiencies and optimize processes.
Another promising trend in the pharmaceutical industry is the Silico drug trials. These drug trials are basically computer simulations being leveraged in the development, evaluation, and intervention of a medical product.
To Conclude
Several new technologies are giving rise to a facilitating future where the world is becoming smarter in terms of handling critical situations related to health.
The evolution of the technologies and the biological understanding humans have acquired over the years has enabled us to achieve a high-level understanding of how the human anatomy works and how certain health issues can be minimized.
From getting a microchip implant that’ll help you in a very advanced way to getting a complete body scan by simply standing still in front of a scanner, the utopian future of the healthcare industry is full of amazing possibilities.
Imagine a world where drugs are no longer the only validated remedy for a cure. Instead, a future has been designed where machines, A.I., and ML combined with IoT are capable of curing diseases instantly without the hassle of taking medicine.
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