The healthcare market has constantly been changing, however what is different about our market now is that the rate of change has sped up. Staying up to date with those changes is almost difficult. Also the daily activities stop leaders from strategic planning of the next three to five year of their organization.
Here then are 3 technology trends underlying much of the change happening in healthcare today:
Cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHR)
There is a growing demand from customers to higher access to and mobility of their health information. Efforts such as Blue Button are a reaction to this need.
Expect to see an ongoing trend of cloud-based EHR adoption since they are more agile, versatile, and flexible for both customers and companies of healthcare.
For instance, athenahealth had the ability to push Ebola-related patient travel history concerns to its EHR athenaClinicals within an hour of the media craze over a Dallas health center’s inability to deal with Ebola patient Thomas Duncan. Duncan has considering that died as a result of the hospital sending him home initially.
Conventional software implementations are simply not capable of pushing smooth updates in near real-time like cloud-based EHRs can. Even more, some cloud-based EHR providers also wrap ancillary business- and information-services around the software, allowing doctors to focus more on what they do best: practice medicine and improve the quality of life for clients.
These other services develop a better experience for both patient and company. The cloud-based EHR field is crowded; Epic and Cerner, 2 of the largest client-server based EHRs, should take note or they will become less relevant (keep in mind Blackberry circa 2007?). Within 5 years’ time, these traditional client-server suppliers will certainly require do the same and approach a cloud-based design.
Patient-Centric Devices
We have actually seen a surge of wearables going into the marketplace and they were amongst the most popular subjects at this year’s TEDMED and SXSW. I have actually been using my Jawbone UP for about 18 months, enhancing my awareness of and focus on continuous quantifiable individual data, such as physical fitness, diet, and sleep-quality.
Envision a diabetic’s biochip spotting blood sugar levels within customized criteria, then starting proper, immediate, restorative and automatic action such as insulin-dosing.
We are in the early innings of the wearable video game in healthcare as the Apple Watch showed; however even the two data points of sleep and physical activity have actually enhanced my own reflections on personal health, energy, and state of mind. When I do not get the right amount of quality sleep, it impacts my performance the following day. Now, without any additional effort of documentation, the device records my cycles for later relationship with my own observations. This information will empower patients and consumers to take higher control of their own health by producing a measurable feedback-loop with which they can experiment through more healthful activities.
In addition to wearables, biosensors are advancing to the point at which, within the next 5 years, they will certainly not just end up being included into clothes but within our bodies. Imagine a diabetic’s biochip finding blood sugar levels within personalized specifications, then initiating appropriate, immediate, restorative and automatic action such as insulin-dosing. Sensing units will soon supply doctors important feedback for a range of chronic conditions: a pacemakers’ use in heart arrhythmias, efficacy (or side effects) of prescribed medications, and dosing compliance, consisting of chemotherapy.
These devices represent the possibility of consumerization within healthcare. Patient-centric devices– beyond simply smartphones or even watches– will assist not just awareness, but more significantly personal control of health. They will create a progressive design of care, in which healthcare institutional involvement– whether medical facility, center, or physician’s workplace– occurs at later phases when most required. This will lead to both financial and time cost savings for consumers and suppliers, along with a better healthcare experience.
Big Data Analytics & Patient Access
Analytics will certainly offer important understandings in operations and more notably, at the point of care. However analytics alone won’t be a panacea unless companies and service providers need to also have more robust patient access tools. Analytics end up being essential when companies act upon those insights.
Currently, numerous of the big data analytics and insights revolve just around operations. It exists that administrators modify, improve, and improve workflows to reduce costs, deliver higher quality care, and decrease 30-day readmissions, gathering greater levels of patient satisfaction.
For providers, the Holy Grail of big data analytics will certainly be at the point of care through data-enrichment, whereby algorithms and other powerful digital technologies become a vital tool in the medical professional’s toolkit. Operationally, leveraging health understandings and pivoting this knowledge into targeted patient outreach and access is what makes analytics so effective.
Business and startups in the healthcare analytics space will no doubt change the method healthcare is being provided and practiced. It’s an interesting time in the market and everyone is looking forward for how these 3 technology trends affect the goal of minimizing costs and increasing quality.
