A Year Into The Pandemic: Patient-centric and Smart Healthcare
If you have been active on social media, I believe you might have come across this infamous poll — Was it 1. CEO 2. CTO or 3. COVID-19 that led your digital transformation?
“The growing receptiveness to HealthTech innovations enables swathes of SEA’s population to leapfrog healthcare access hurdles, manage healthcare needs and improve quality of life.”
– PwC Singapore’s Health Industries Leader, Dr. Zubin Daruwalla.
The pandemic has accelerated the arrival of what Dr. Zubin Daruwalla terms the New Health Economy (NHE) — the future of healthcare. According to Statista, approximately 74% of the healthcare industry has sped up its digital transformation efforts to meet changing business and market requirements for both employees and patients during the pandemic.
The future of healthcare hence lays the foundation for a patient-centric and smart healthcare system.
Challenges of Healthcare Innovation
The pandemic has highlighted the need for digital solutions in our everyday lives, transforming healthcare norms that are now guided by consumer needs and workplace productivity.
With this accelerated need to transform digitally, how can we reduce the resistance of healthcare practitioners by integrating technology into their daily workflow? How can we at the same time, enhance a patients’ ward experience while minimizing physical contact?
With a long-term goal for the industry to provide accessible, sustainable, and quality healthcare, 2359 aims to help the healthcare industry embark on this journey. Here are some use cases where technology helped in facilitating valuable patient-nurses interactions and increased staff efficiency.
Solutions: Use Cases
1. My Care Lite
MyCare Lite, an application integrated into in-ward mobile phones, was rolled out across isolation wards in Singapore for nurses to attend to Covid-19 patients with minimized contact in light of the pandemic.
Wearable Biosensors
Why need call bells when you have biosensors! Wearable biosensors are worn on patients’ wrists to help wirelessly transmit their heart rate, respiration rate, and oxygen saturation readings to MyCare Lite. This will in turn allow hospital staff to monitor their well-being continuously and remotely.
Instant Request Function
Patients can communicate and send in requests via MyCare Lite without having to use the call bell. This cuts down contact and increases efficiency for nurses as they can view requests wherever they are without having to be physically present to attend to patients’ needs.
“It reduces the turnaround time for nurses to meet patients’ requests, saving 10minutes per trip”
– Esther Fan, Assistant Nurse Clinician, Singapore General Hospital (SGH)
Self-serve Patient Profiling
This feature allows patients to fill in personal information for their hospital admission such as travel history, contact history with confirmed Covid-19 patients. These details would be sent directly to the doctors to help reduce both paperwork and processing time for the healthcare team.
Q&A Support
Human connection is vital in conveying empathy and enhancing the patient experience. Studies have shown that such patient-provider relationships may lead to better clinical outcomes due to increased patient adherence to nurses’ advice. MyCare Lite is integrated with chat support where patients can connect with nurses at any time of the day. They can submit questions regarding their treatment and recovery plan while nurses and care teams can have them answered remotely without in-person contact.
Inclusive Design
To ensure the application is intuitive for both nurses and patients, MyCare Lite was co-created with Apple’s Enterprise Design Lab and SingHealth. Within 2 weeks of launch, the application has successfully rolled out across more than 50 wards, served over 100 Covid-19 patients, and facilitated thousands of contactless interactions in isolation facilities. A handful of press coverage on Channel News Asia, The Straits Times, Lian He Zaobao, HealthXchange, were also generated due to the application’s success.
2. My Care
Beyond the pandemic, SingHealth needed a digital solution to empower patients to be more aware of their medical condition throughout their hospital stay while improving nurses’ productivity at work.
Full-access To Personal Medical Information
MyCare is an enhanced application of MyCare Lite with backend integration on iPads placed by the bedside of every in-ward patient. Patients have the autonomy to view their entire medical information including the medications they are consuming and their daily care schedule throughout their hospital stay.
So now that patients have clarity on their medical condition, the next question in line would be how can we empower patients to have the confidence to take care of their health during their stay?
Educational Materials
“Patients are now empowered to be partners in their care and they take charge of their medical condition better,”
– Assistant nurse clinician Tan Sheng Lian, Singapore General Hospital (SGH)
MyCare allows patients to access personalized videos depending on their medical conditions such as wound care, nutrition, and cardiovascular condition, as well as informing them of what to expect during their hospital stay.
Data Security
A unique password is tied to each patient to safeguard their confidentiality. To access information on the MyCare application, patients will have to key in the given password. All records will be deleted from the iPad upon a patient’s discharge to ensure no historical data is stored on the device.
The Future of HealthTech Growth
Singapore, unofficially dubbed “ASEAN’s sandbox for digital innovation”, looks ahead into the new decade where new digital technologies continue to transform the healthcare industry. Producing a growing range of solutions will enable a more preventive approach towards healthcare and bridge the infrastructure gap of patient-doctor interactions anywhere.
To end this post off, here are 3 key features of technology to look out for in providing patient-centric and smart healthcare:
- Inclusive Design
To curb change management among healthcare employees and encourage adoption among patients, user experience (UX) is crucial. Digital solutions need to be user-friendly and take into consideration the possible situational challenges faced by their end-user. To provide accessibility of healthcare services is to be inclusive.
2. Patient Personalization and Constant Communication
“Technologies can never replace personal and human touch of a nurse, but they can save nurses time needed for certain routine yet time-consuming processes, freeing them to do essentials while maintaining human touch.”
One downside of digital solutions is the lack of intimacy between patients and their healthcare practitioners. Hence, these solutions must rely on personalization and constant communication through chat support or video function to bridge patient-nurses interaction. Patients are also able to have real-time access to their medical information and educational materials tailored to their specific needs.
3. Data Security
With sensitive patient information is being processed digitally, cyber risk and compliance need to be at the forefront of digitization efforts as it exacerbates vulnerability to cybersecurity attacks. Some best practices may include logging and monitoring use, encrypting data, securing devices, and conducting regular risk assessments.
Have an idea for your own digital transformation journey? We would love to have a chat with you.
