Emerging IT Trends In Healthcare That Will Impact The Healthcare Industry
The IT industry has expanded exponentially in the last few decades. Healthcare providers realized the role that technology can play early enough, and adopted it intensively in their operations to improve patient care. According to a recent report by Springboard Research which provides retail performance insights, the growth in healthcare IT market in India has been the highest in Asia. A few studies also forecast the Indian medical technology market to grow from USD 2.7 billion in 2008 to USD 14 billion in 2020. While the industry is growing, the lack of trained medical professionals remains a major opportunity for the expansion of IT. The convergence of healthcare with IT trends, such as cloud computing and wireless technologies, will play a major role in improving accessibility and meeting the challenge of manpower shortages and improved patient care.
Emerging trends in healthcare IT industry
The proportion of aging population who need more personalized care and round-the-clock treatment is increasing, propelling the need for more human resources in hospitals. Healthcare, along with technology, will give the industry and care providers the ability to simplify processes and offer personalized care with greater efficiency. Using technology driven solutions to replace labor-intensive tasks that are better done by machines can be a big time-saver. A report by the Institute for Health Technology Transformation says, technology driven solutions makes population health management feasible, scalable, and sustainable. Technology driven solutions in healthcare can lead to standardized and error-free process that would help improve the quality of care and services at the hospitals. The industry is expected to witness the adoption of technologies such as online or electronic medical records (EMR), cyber security for medical records, universal coding for diseases, and improved health insurance and revenue cycle management. The emerging trends in healthcare could change the face of the healthcare industry by streamlining the medical care processes.
Electronic health records. Maintaining patient data in electronic format is a necessity for the industry as managing everyday medical records in a physical form is time- consuming apart from requiring a lot of effort and resources. It reduces the possibilities of human error and the chances of losing important patient data considering the risk associated with it. While electronic medical records can ease the task of medical professionals at the hospitals, coding the medical record documentation, such as transcription of physician notes, laboratory and radiological results, etc. further allows doctors around the world to be on the same platform with medical records being in universally-accepted codes.
Business intelligence and analytics. It is known that healthcare is the one industry that has the most complex data among all industries. This wealth of data spanning patient experience, clinical, quality of service, cost, and financials, when utilized effectively can drastically improve performance. Understanding the terabytes of data, drawing deeper insights and making actionable decisions are the need of the hour in the healthcare industry, all of which are possible with BI and the related analytics. BI in healthcare gives a healthcare provider predictive analytics, data modeling, forecasting, and trends for operational, financial, and clinical data. Analysis of financial and departmental data that comprises of emergency, surgical, and pharmacy analytics, as well as insights into physician quality, performance improvement, and patient outcomes are made possible with BI. With value-based care gaining precedence over fee-for-service, BI is gaining importance to improve patient care too. Such analytical tools help doctors to make accurate diagnosis and early interventions that can prevent many diseases while also predicting future medical costs. Most importantly, patients benefit as they receive treatment and medications that could work better for them.
IoT in healthcare. IoT in healthcare industry would be able to meet the demands of the informed patients on one side and reduce the time for patient monitoring for doctors and patients on the other side. It will enable evidence based and customized treatments for patients and ensure shortened treatment cycle and wider patient coverage for the healthcare providers. With early detection of diseases and diagnosis of medical condition, patients would be able to begin their medications sooner in order to avoid the further complication. With fewer medical errors and improved patient care, there would be fewer visits to the hospital and hospital stays that would result in reduced cost of care.
The Indian healthcare sector is now leveraging the latest in technologies and with that has emerged many other challenges. With the right tools, the sector would be able to surmount them. While digitization has taken deep root in the industry, it is imperative to ensure patient data remains leak-proof and there is no chance of data breach. Omega Healthcare ensures a very high-level security to secure patient data. The company believes that privacy is a fundamental governing principle of the patient–physician relationship for the efficient delivery of healthcare, and thus, is of utmost importance.
