New trends indicate that companies have started to realize the impact of digital solutions on their businesses. This article will highlight the advances and digital solutions that could help these “healthcare” companies go digital.

Why Digital Transformation in Healthcare?

With a huge volume of patients visiting every healthcare facility, especially in today’s healthcare circumstances, it is essential that these institutions adopt digital strategies and solutions to deliver comprehensive and faster patient care. Indeed, processing a massive volume of data and patient records is often difficult (usually done manually) for most healthcare organizations, which has an impact on care. Businesses should engage in seasoned digital transformation services and invest in digital solutions to deliver faster service to patients.

Here are some of the common benefits that digitalization offers to the healthcare industry.

• Perfect coordination between doctor and patient
• Automated administrative tasks
• Secure data
• Access to real-time health information
• Relationship between several health specialists
• Collaborative studies and research
• Online appointment booking
• Better patient management
• Faster access to caregivers or nurses during health crises
• Drug control
• Reduction of manual errors
• Overfed hospital evaluations
• Better revenue management
• Improved clinical findings

Let’s dive deep to find out the main trends that are having and will impact the healthcare industry and their benefits, in the sections below.

On-Demand Healthcare

Today’s patients prefer not to wait long hours in hospitals to consult, especially when it comes to fever or headaches for example, but rather prefer to be directed to digital platforms for help. immediate. What if access to care was possible via Smartphone? Sounds crazy, right? This is why “on-demand” health services have started to experience real success.

Benefits

• Convenience
• Reduction in healthcare costs and hospitalizations
• Effective interaction with patients
• Reduction of paperwork
• Complementary work for doctors

Big data

With a massive volume of data such as financial, clinical, R&D, administrative, and operational data available in the healthcare industry, Big Data can feed them with meaningful actions to improve the overall operational efficiency of the industry.

Benefits

• Advanced patient care
• Improved operational efficiency
• Discover the best cure for diseases
• Personalized and integrated communication
• Improved access to critical information
• Proactive maintenance of equipment

Portable Medical Devices

The introduction of wearable technology has taken the medical industry by storm and the next time you look at your watch you will even be able to track calories burned while you sleep/run. Isn’t that a godsend! The biggest benefit of using wearable technology in healthcare is to help patients with data take control of their health.

Benefits

• Encourages proactive health care
• Keeps patients engaged
• Performs several functions
• Benefits for providers and staff
• Help monitor vulnerable patients

Virtual Reality for Medical Training

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in healthcare have opened the door to many new opportunities. These technologies offer viable solutions to the most critical challenges facing the healthcare system and experienced users with opportunities in areas such as general diagnostics and medical education. AR and VR are two technologies that can offer new dimensions to treatment to provide better patient care.

Benefits

• Psychological relief and treatment
• Data visualization / body mapping / interactive patient information
• Advanced diagnostics/risk assessment
• VR surgery
• Assistance with AR surgery
• Medical training/simulation
• Medical consultation
• Emergency navigation
• Pain management
• 3D cancer study
• Helps in the healing of brain damage
• Improving the social skills of children with autism
• Reduction of symptoms of depression
• Help for veterans with PTSD
• Treatment of phobias
• Early detection of Alzheimer’s disease
• Identification of the first signs of schizophrenia

AI and Machine Learning in Healthcare

Artificial Intelligence or AI offers an array of benefits for healthcare over clinical decision-making techniques. The implementation of AI and machine learning “ML” in the industry can provide medical staff and patients with more precise data, allowing them to gain unprecedented insights into diagnostics, processes of care, the variability of treatments, and patient outcomes.

Benefits

• Mind-mapping via brain-computer interfaces
• Development of new generation radiology tools
• Extension of services in developing or underdeveloped regions
• Minimize the use of electronic health records
• Prevention of the risks of antibiotic resistance
• Accurate analytical data for pathology images
• Intelligence enhancement for medical devices and machines
• Advancement of Immunotherapy for Cancer Treatments
• Transformation of the EHR into a potential predictor of risk
• Health monitoring using wearable technology and personal devices
• Converting selfies into powerful diagnostic tools
• Automated and accurate compliance
• Better decision making
• Prediction of future illnesses
• Prevention of fraudulent invoicing

Robotics in Healthcare

Robots help medical staff complete routine tasks faster to help them focus on other pressing responsibilities. Such healthcare automation makes medical procedures safer and less expensive for patients. The huge benefit of using robots in healthcare is microsurgery, which humans find difficult to handle.

Benefits

• Shorter hospital stay
• Decreased pain and discomfort
• Faster recovery time and return to routine
• Micro incisions, reducing the risk of infection
• Reduction of blood loss and transfusions
• Minimal scars
• Better visualization
• Improved dexterity
• Greater precision

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is an excellent alternative for patients to overcome patient-provider distance, access to reliable transportation, fragmentation of care due to time gaps between appointments, and lack of provider. health care. A recent survey indicates that 90% had already started to develop or implement a telemedicine program.

Benefits

• Increase access to healthcare
• Improves the quality of patient care
• Reduces healthcare costs
• Improves patient engagement / satisfaction
• Improves the satisfaction of health service providers
• More practical
• Extended access to specialist and referring physicians

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) has started to impact the healthcare industry through smart connected devices, systems, and objects that are used by billions of users to mine data and help them make faster, more specific, and contextualized decisions. The IoT in the healthcare industry has opened doors to many opportunities. According to a market forecast, the IoT healthcare market is worth $ 158.07 billion with 50 billion connected devices by the end of 2021.

Benefits

• Cost reduction
• Better patient experience
• Improved medication management
• Reduction of errors and waste
• Improved treatment outcomes
• Real-time reporting and monitoring
• End-to-end connectivity and affordable prices
• Organized data and analysis
• Monitoring and alerts
• Remote medical assistance
• Research

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers a myriad of benefits to healthcare with its virtually unlimited scalability, high availability, and data accessibility at an affordable budget.

A BCC Research report released in January 2018 estimates that global spending by all healthcare players on cloud computing will reach $ 35 billion by 2022, at a double-digit cumulative annual growth rate of 11.6% over the period 2017-2022. (Source: BCC)

Benefits

• High data availability, robust backup and disaster recovery capabilities
• Effective data security, protection against unauthorized access and breaches.
• Proven compliance with regulatory frameworks
• Collaboration
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning
• Data storage
• Better use of big data to treat patients
• Scalability
• Cost
• Improved medical research
• Remote patient care
• security
• Greater reach, especially in times of disaster
• Better storage – lower cost

Chatbots

The shortage of qualified personnel has had an impact on achieving better patient outcomes, and manual processes in this area have compounded the challenges.

Leaders in the healthcare industry are turning to a wide range of technology solutions, and among them, medical chatbots are widely adopted. If you are the leader in the healthcare organization, you would definitely like to implement medical chatbots to simplify your healthcare challenges and improve patient care.

Read: Benefits of Using Chatbots in your Business

Benefits

• Answers to customer FAQs
• Schedule appointments and consultations from anywhere
• Track patient care to minimize unwanted appointments and admissions
• Inform patients with prescription refills and care guidelines via alerts and notifications
• Streamline admission, discharge, and transfer requests
• Alerting teams during patient emergencies
• Storage and updating of medical history and patient records
• Exchange of data from currently disparate health systems
• Automate data entry to reduce human-made errors and duplication

Data Science and Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics (PA) uses technology and statistical methods to analyze massive amounts of information to predict outcomes for individual patients. The information can be data from previous treatments and the latest medical research published in top journals / databases.

Benefits

• Increased diagnostic accuracy
• Help with preventive medicine
• Answers provided to physicians for each patient
• Forecast costs of insurance products provided to staff and hospitals
• Development of overtime precision prediction models for researchers
• Selection of the right hospital and clinic sites
• Optimization of staffing levels and improvement of business operations
• Identification of households most likely to respond to marketing messages
• Optimization of new and existing commercial markets
• Support for the long-term strategic planning initiative

From what has been quoted above, it is evident that digital solutions play a critical role in the evolution of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. As more companies have started investing in digital strategy and solutions, it becomes important to find the right partner for their unique needs.