By Dan Matthews, Writer, Content Consultant, and Researcher
Twitter:Â @danielmatthews0
Imagine a world in which healthcare is personalized to you based on your unique data and circumstances. Now imagine that the world can be brought into your own home to offer you the kind of healthcare treatments you need, all with the added benefit of artificial intelligence analysis and diagnostic tools.
This world is the future of healthcare information technology (IT), and it becomes more of the present every day. With the power of big data collection supported by connected devices, unprecedented medical solutions are now possible. From the accessibility of telehealth to the precision of AI, the future is here.
Healthcare IT has been transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the tech advancements of our time. Explore these to understand the direction healthcare technology is already headed.
The impact of COVID-19
While healthcare is a notoriously slow sector for embracing change and technology, the coronavirus pandemic acted as a catalyst. Care facilities faced financial impacts in the ballpark of $323.1 billion. These losses stemmed from postponed elective care and the essential preparations that had to be undertaken to manage the surge of pandemic patients. Facing these threats, care facilities had to adapt and fast.
The changes that resulted due to COVID-19 were threefold. As patients and facilities alike sought more accessible care solutions that retained quality and cut down costs, these were the IT directions they pivoted:
- Telehealth
- Cloud-based data storage
- Cybersecurity solutions
The reasons for a renewed focus in all three of these categories are clear. Maintaining access to a doctor while under quarantine presented its own difficulties and health risks. Telehealth became a more viable option than ever before in maintaining care accessibility for a wide range of patients. In turn, COVID-19 made telehealth more accessible to care providers through federal funding. As a result of its subsequent increase in popularity, a greater number of consumers discovered the invaluable benefits of telehealth services.
Then, the need to accommodate these platforms with cloud data electronic health records (EHRs) led to more change. The more data a care facility can track and analyze securely and privately, the better they are prepared to offer treatments and solutions. Cloud services take the pressure off of singular locations, and advancing tech allows EHRs to be increasingly decentralized. Their convenience and adaptability make them a key element of the future of healthcare information systems.
Finally, the intense pressures of the COVID-era cybersecurity challenges led to an enhanced focus on securing data systems. An estimated 200% increase in cyberattacks arrived on the back of the coronavirus pandemic. These overwhelmingly were targeted at care facilities because they typically house patient data that is highly valued on the black market. To ward off these attacks, care facilities needed to adopt greater cybersecurity standards and systems.
With the immediate need for accessible care and records all stored safely and privately, care facilities had to change their approach to IT. Fortunately, modern tech advancements helped.
The advancements in tech
One way of looking at it is that we are perhaps fortunate that COVID arrived when it did. Because of advancements in technology like Internet of Things (IoT) wearable devices, artificial intelligence, and machine learning processes, we built and adopted technological systems that made these care solutions possible.
Advancements in these technologies are the future of healthcare. As they are implemented more consistently across the medical sector, care providers can offer more accessible and higher-quality treatments. As a result, will develop greater life-saving solutions.
These are the technologies that will make up the future of healthcare IT:
1. IoT devices
IoT represents a range of valuable medical devices that include wearables, sensors, and monitors. These can be utilized at the bedside or consistently worn on a patient to track and record valuable health data. In the future, the insights from IoT wearables might be tracked in real-time by physicians who can then access that data to provide more personal and accurate treatment plans.
2. Artificial Intelligence
Then, the advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning processes have made all kinds of healthcare innovations possible. Paired with telehealth, AI analysis can diagnose a patient based on observable symptoms. We have already seen the applications of AI present in medical diagnostics that have analyzed CT scans more quickly and efficiently than human is capable of.
Modern platforms like Amazon prove the effectiveness of AI analytics if applied to healthcare. Imagine care this personalized to your data the way Amazon recommends products. This is the future of healthcare.
3. Cloud and blockchain information systems
But all the data generated both now and in the future across healthcare platforms need a place to be safely stored and accessed. In the future, cloud systems will likely move to more secure blockchain platforms. Blockchain is a technology made popular by cryptocurrencies and it allows for decentralized and safe data storage on immutable and easily trackable platforms.
If applied to healthcare, blockchain or other secure cloud data storage systems can give physicians the tools they need to generate vast amounts of medical information while still being able to maintain HIPAA standards. At the same time, these systems can eliminate common spreadsheet risks that occur in healthcare data management by adding trackability, uniformity, and transparency to overall information systems.
These are just three of the vast number of tech innovations that have made their way to healthcare IT. In the future, we will see greater advancements on these and other platforms that will improve the accessibility of care, the availability of telehealth, and the security of medical data.
Care providers can look forward to the accessibility of these vital innovations as we move into the future of care. For now, providers should explore the solutions tech offers them and look for ways to get ahead of these developments.