How MedTech is enhancing patient care

Technology has been a great enabler for the healthcare ecosystem as it has solved the sector’s pressing challenges, and has driven innovation in patient care. However, in recent times, with the advancements in digital technologies and their convergence in healthcare, we see immense transformation in care delivery. Today, the marriage between digital and medical technologies has helped in generating data and providing critical clinical insights that facilitate disease prevention, diagnosing chronic ailments precisely, effective treatment, monitoring and management of health, and more. In keeping with these transformations, we can confidently say that medical sciences have now evolved to be called MedTech.

MedTech today improves efficiency across healthcare conundrum. It provides real-time health analysis to doctors and enables all other healthcare professionals. The role of MedTech turned out to be considerably more significant during the pandemic when MedTech was primarily used to address need gaps in healthcare.

We all know that digital health technologies have played a crucial role in the fight against the novel coronavirus. During the last 20 months, digital technologies have helped in identifying hotspots, contact tracing, aerial surveillance, deliveries of medical supplies, improving access to Covid-19 testing and vaccination, telemedicine, and many more that addressed the need gaps. There was a wide range of digital health initiatives that focused on enhancing patient experiences and bridging gaps in access by providing a holistic and personalized approach to delivering care, regardless of location.

These advances have been a testament to the fact that medical technology has not only transformed patient care but has also enhanced clinical sciences. For instance, medical technologies have played a significant role in taking care of patients, customizing healthcare, and making it cost-effective. Artificial intelligence (AI)-backed technologies have primarily been propellers for such advancement. And in this regard, the complexity and rise of data in healthcare has been the key factor driving healthcare providers, especially hospitals, to apply AI in their daily practice. Today, right from the time a patient visits a hospital website, to the patient’s admission, diagnosis, treatment, clinical monitoring, and even follow-ups are managed with the help of AI-backed technologies.

To give you a glimpse of how hospitals effectively used AI in the past couple of years and predominantly during the pandemic, we utilized these technologies to enhance the patient experience. So, when a patient visited our hospital website our AI-enabled help tool would help them identify with risk factors and then guide them to the right doctor, get the appointment, and proceed with the diagnosis process. We also incorporated predictability algorithms to simplify and fasten the process for patients. This became very useful to us during the pandemic. We utilized predictability algorithms to detect patients at the risk of Covid-19, and in diagnostic areas to find severity, and more. Now, the biggest advantage these technologies offer to us as a hospital is that they help in enhancing patient experience from end-to-end and simplify the entire process, bringing value to the work we do. In a nutshell, technologies that help healthcare providers take care of the patients and address the need gaps even in the rural areas will certainly be a boon to the industry and will be the way forward.

On the home healthcare front, MedTech also enhances remote monitoring; it uses digital technologies to collect health data from patients in one location and electronically transmit that information safely to healthcare providers in a different location for clinical examination. These technologies greatly help in eliminating unnecessary patient contact and ease the burden on frontline physicians, clinicians, hospitals, and medical centers at large.

In the coming years, through such integrated technologies, healthcare will become accessible and affordable, with a stronger focus on patient outcomes. Having said that, the industry must also focus on ensuring the safety of the health data generated, address all cyber security concerns, and improve governance on all digital health programs. In the coming times, healthcare data privacy and protection will be the key area of focus.