A paradigm shift in healthcare
Same as the financial sector, it has been noticed that state-of-the-art technologies did not have much effect on Healthcare. The big merchants created a protective wall in other not to venture in advance technologies in this field. Financial areas are changing rapidly and we are now witnessing the adopting of modern technologies in these areas. But healthcare is far behind from our modern technologies.
When you visit some hospitals, you may see outdated and slow computer hardware and other devices in those hospitals. Those antiquated machines have less computation power compared to your smart-phones. The monitors and servers are far expensive and only a few vendors are providing those. The big vendors are using the term — “medical grade” to protect their interest or in another word protect us from the smart-technologies.
Some days ago a colleague of mine Fred Zolla by name, published an article [1] on the interoperability in electronic health record system. He wrote, “Has anyone noticed that the ONC said Interoperability is a primary focus and will be achieved within ten years? That statement was made more than 5 years ago, and we are still ten years away from a solution.” We engineer use the term called integration, which means that one system can integrate to another system and at the same time can transfer information regardless of differences in internal design.
Let me cite an example of where interoperability can play an important part. Among the engineers, one of the popular tools is Slack (which has about 6 million daily users as of September 2017). There are many similar messaging platforms in the market which has better functions and sexier. But the main feature that Slack has over others is that it has very good integration capability with other app or system. You can receive notification from other IoT services or even order pizza from Slack.
Slack’s achievement so far tells us that, if your system can easily be integrated to another system, then there are clear and more chances that user will be more active on your platform. There are similar approaches going on in the financial sector, but not in the healthcare. There is a big empty space where this type of integrated or interoperability will become more famous.
Better things in the scenario are changing. Healthcare institutes are currently adopting the use of a cloud-based system. And the billing system of the healthcare is going to change. Till date, the billing system of a hospital is very unusual than any other service area. If a doctor spends 5 min or 30 min, the charges will be the same. The grade of service amount is not present. So now we are talking the new way of healthcare service. Which simply means empowerment of the patient?
I think after some years there will be rapid changes in the healthcare. The “Uber” type service will be more available. The healthcare institutes will bid for your case so that you can select your doctor and hospital. To reach that futuristic service, more digitalized and decentralized system need to be implemented.
When I was writing this article, Apple has released a health record system for iPhone so that user can have vital information about them [2]. The blockchain based system will be adopted someday with the aim of decentralizing that information. Now we see a lot of mobile apps based system in health, wellness, and sports areas. Wellness enthusiastic people are using those apps. Some of the apps are connected with wearable devices which track the vital signs. We are calling it passive monitor. Many studies have shown that this passive monitor is also very important in the prevention of major events.
A paradigm shift is happening in the healthcare sector and we are blessed to watch this transformation. Welcome to the new era of healthcare 😊
References:
1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/healthcare-data-vendors-have-own-agenda-dont-fooled-fred-zolla/