Understanding the Dynamics of Digital Healthcare

Healthcare is a complex and humongous industry working with a simple and noble goal: getting humanity healthy and keeping them that way for as long as possible.

Medical science along with technology is thriving hard to make lives of people easier every day. In the similar context, digital healthcare is booming like anything, being backed by technologies like RPA, AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning, and so on.  According to the book – Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare by Parag Mahajan – the data in the healthcare industry doubles up almost in seventy-three days. The book lays special emphasis on as how digital healthcare holds future for humans, and it is the technology like RPA, AI which will foster the digitization of healthcare across the globe, soon.

There are various fields of study in Digital Healthcare. As the industry growing at a rapid pace, the scope of study in this field is virtually endless.

Following are some of the main areas of healthcare-

Clinical Healthcare-

Where doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals work with patients to diagnose and treat them for healthier lives.

Cardiology, Dentistry, Emergency medicine, Gerontology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology are some of the areas of study in clinical healthcare.

Healthcare Administration-

Looking after the administration in healthcare is just as important.

Hospital administration, Medical practice administration, Nursing administration, Healthcare financial management, Healthcare information management is the field of expertise in administration.

Public Health-

Where in clinical healthcare, individual treatment is involved, in Public Health medical professionals focus on groups. Study of the community and quality of life and health of the populous is involved here. Biostatistics, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Health Policy and Management, Social and Behavioral Sciences are some of the fields of study in Public Health sector.

What is Digital Healthcare?

Digital healthcare is the confluence of life sciences and technological development. Digital healthcare affects the implementation of new treatments and transforms markets around the world with a significant impact.

These technological advancements in healthcare enables healthcare providers to process relevant information and data of thousands of patients. And as there a dramatic rise of numbers of elderly people, the need of self-health monitoring and preventative medicines is also increasing.

The need of the hour is how to address the issues the healthcare industry is facing like affordability and accessibility and quality healthcare.

Efficiently using innovative and disruptive digital healthcare solutions can provide patients with treatment focusing on preventive medication as well as independence and freedom to communicate with doctors and other medical professionals.

There are plenty of digital advancements happening in healthcare industry. Below is a brief overview of the technologies that could revolutionize the field-

Wearables–

Smart health tracking device capable of accumulating personalized, real-time data, promoting healthy lifestyles, and gathering data to feed into medical research. To enhance performance, some businesses have already incorporated wearables in the workplace. By monitoring their employees ' stress levels and wellbeing, businesses can recommend healthier habits, often resulting in increased productivity.

Digital Trend Monitoring-

By closely monitoring keyword activity on social networking sites and search engines, patterns are increasingly being used to search for specific medical symptoms to help detect and respond to disease outbreaks. Not only this insight is advantageous to any institution in the health sector, but it can be helpful to any company who seeks to keep their workforce healthy.

Telemedicine-

Telemedicine Mobile technology is progressively being used by eliminating the need to travel to see a healthcare professional thus reducing the pressure on healthcare systems. Any reduction in travel time can have a positive impact on productivity. This trend has enabled innovative solutions to be developed that harness the capacity of networked technologies to connect people who would otherwise find access to health information difficult.

Not just this but on micro levels too, Digital solutions for healthcare industry problems are proving reformative.

Documentation-

Digitization of systems have changed the healthcare file on ground levels. Errors occurring due to poor and tedious process of documentation has changed dramatically where all the documentation is digitized and readily available in the time of need.

Time-Management-

Nowadays, communication between patient and medical professionals has become convenient as patients can make appointments online which saves time on both- patients and doctor’s part. Time management systems via digital platforms proving time saving and effective method.

Digitization of Accessible System-

As the use of technology such as mobile devices has increased, healthcare is more accessible for laymen. Patients are more in control of their health with digital healthcare solutions.

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By Rutuja Sanjay / April 30, 2019