Healthcare
The healthcare system has been an integral part of our society for many centuries. Even though, it has went through many changes throughout the years, some practices have not changed much. In today’s digital world, we have put a lot of effort into improving and streamlining most (if not all) aspects of our lives with the help of technology. Despite all that effort, it seems like some aspects of the healthcare system such as meeting patients face-to-face have been neglected are still used to this day.
Mobile networks allow us to have access to the digital world anywhere and anytime. Nowadays we can get into a conversation or a video chat with a person on the other side of the world instantly. This should also present us the opportunity to be able to connect with a doctor immediately and have a consultation. When you think about it even harder, this might cause more people to ask for a doctor’s advice more frequently since it would be much easier. This could also negate many of the unpleasant aspects of visiting the doctors office.
One of the issues that digital consultations with a doctor might be able to negate is the waiting room issue. Everybody has been in the situation where they had to wait for a long time in a room full of other people, many of which are constantly coughing, sneezing and probably making you feel more ill than you actually are. With digital consultations, you would be able to get the proper treatment from your doctor from the safety and comfort of your home.
Another benefit of digital consultations with a doctor is the ease of access to disabled people. It is true that all hospitals have more than adequate facilities allowing for disabled access but the problem of getting to the hospital is still there. In some cases, it is the doctor who visits the patient but that is very ineffective and usually more expensive since the doctor has to be absent from the office and he/she has to spend time travelling instead of working. With digital consultations, people would be able to meet with their doctors much more easily from the comfort of their own home saving their own and the doctors’ time.
Sometimes we are faced with the issue of needing a doctor and being somewhere abroad. Usually people have health insurance which allows them to go to the nearest hospital and get treatment but in more serious cases information about past conditions, allergies, ancestry, medications, etc. might need to be known by the doctors who are treating the patient. Today’s technology allows us to have digital records of people and keep track of all kinds of information about them, including health data. The only issue that needs to be resolved is that each country keeps track of their own records and sharing them outside of the country is not a very quick process due to the many regulations.
One of the greatest benefits of implementing technology into the healthcare system would probably be digital prescriptions. I would say that digital prescriptions are a necessity for being able to conduct a digital consultation with a doctor because otherwise patients would still have to visit the doctor in order to be able to get their medicine. Currently, the process of prescribing medicine is highly ineffective. It also presents the risk of losing the prescription and also forged prescriptions. With digital prescriptions fully implemented, these issues would not be present and a doctor would be able to prescribe medicine to a patient in the matter of moments, independent of where both of them are.
Another part of the digital world around us that could make the transition to online consultations with doctors possible is wearable tech and the health features implemented in the smartphones. For the past couple of years, smartphones have been able to use their cameras to measure pulse and some smart watches even have the ability to create an ECG (electrocardiogram) in addition to all the information about your daily movements. All of this data can be exported and sent to a doctor. As we continue to develop more and more such features this would improve the doctors’ ability to diagnose a patient remotely.
Digital consultations might also have an enormous impact on the environment. If we get to the point where most of the patients communicate with a doctor through technology and not in person then there wouldn’t be a need for such big hospitals since not that many people would need to visit them. The consequences of smaller buildings are quite obvious — less electricity consumed, more space for parks and green areas, less overall carbon footprint. In addition to that, online consultations would not require travelling to a doctor’s office reducing traffic and therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
Approaching from a completely different angle, we can look at how today’s technological world aims to help improve healthcare in the future. For example, for the past couple of years, researchers have been working heavily on nanotechnology and its applications in healthcare. The idea to use extremely small robots would travel into your body make them do different medical tasks such as interventions, regulation and monitoring of (blood, hormonal, etc.) levels, drug delivery, cancer treatment and more.
Today’s technological and digital world allows us to access an unlimited amount of information on demand and contact anybody immediately. This has caused changes in many aspects of our everyday lives but it seems that healthcare advancements are falling behind. Many of the developed countries have started the process of digitising healthcare but the rest of the world is lacking the resources to do that. Many of the world organisations (such as WHO and UN) are fighting to develop healthcare in less developed countries knowing that it would lead to a better world.
