By Jason Roys
Even as the U.S. healthcare system wobbles under the weight of COVID-19, increasing healthcare costs and healthcare worker burnout, groundbreaking technological advancements are being made that are revolutionizing patient care and patient outcomes.
Keeping Americans healthy is essential for a strong, secure nation, and it has long been a primary focus of SDV INTERNATIONAL. With more than a decade of leadership in Health Information Technology (HIT), our experts are the backbone of the largest healthcare organizations in the world. As such, we keep our finger on the pulse of emerging healthcare technology trends.
In this article, we’ll review some of the exciting healthcare technology trends we’re seeing now and down the road.
1. PATIENT-CENTERED APPROACH
The term “patient-centered approach” has come to mean everything from having an ombudsman on the hospital staff to putting comfy chairs in the waiting room. While those things may enhance a patient’s experience, a truly patient-centered approach is complex and evolving, and technology plays a huge role.
THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE
One of the keys to improving patient outcomes is reducing the pain points that people experience when accessing health care, from administrative inefficiency to lack of communication between medical facilities. Why? Because it puts the patient in the driver’s seat, and proactive healthcare is always better than reactive healthcare. Self-service and on-demand care and communication are at the forefront of this trend.
Healthcare systems are beginning to understand that legacy systems and manual processes hurt the patient experience. Trends in healthcare include greater capabilities of patient portals, increasing adoption of them by users, and more migration to the cloud and away from legacy systems. One example is SDV INTERNATIONAL’s work with the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) to develop an on-demand transportation service for disabled veterans, VetRide.
GENOMICS AND PERSONALIZED MEDICINE
The Human Genome Project describes personalized medicine as “an emerging practice of medicine that uses an individual's genetic profile to guide decisions made in regard to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.”
What drives it, of course, is data — in this case from the Human Genome Project. As more and more people have their genes sequenced and placed in a medical file, a genetic profile can be developed to help doctors select the proper medication or therapy and administer it using the proper dose or regimen.
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS
Predictive analytics is common in data-driven organizations. For healthcare, it means analyzing data to predict the chances of particular health events (like the next pandemic) or the likelihood that a patient will respond to a particular treatment.
For example, analyzing a person’s health conditions as well as social determinants and demographic factors may give insight into which individuals would benefit from a personalized health or wellness program to prevent chronic conditions. Artificial intelligence (AI) gives healthcare providers the ability to analyze and understand the massive amounts of data that go into such determinations.
2. REMOTE MONITORING AND TELEHEALTH
What began during the pandemic as a way to keep patients out of doctors’ waiting rooms has become an integral part of the healthcare system. In 2023, we see that telehealth services are being extended to other specialties and care paths, such as mental health and monitoring of patients with chronic conditions.
WEARABLES AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS
Did you know your Apple watch can perform and record a 30-second EKG to detect atrial fibrillation? Welcome to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), the healthcare equivalent of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Wearable medical devices give users immediate feedback, improve patient outcomes, and can alert medical professionals to serious conditions. There are blood glucose sensors that record results in a patient’s smartphone and send them to a provider. There’s a wearable blood pressure monitor that records heart activity, steps taken, and distance traveled. Or how about earbuds that record temperature, a sports bra that aids cancer detection, and eating utensils that can track tremors?
REMOTE PATIENT MONITORING
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is not a substitute for in-person care, but it does allow a provider to understand the full picture of their patient’s symptoms over time, as opposed to just at the in-person visit. For example, remote blood pressure monitoring reduces the possibility of “white coat hypertension,” an affliction for people who experience anxiety in a doctor’s office, which can skew data collection.
A doctor may prescribe a wearable to monitor a patient with a chronic illness or who is in recovery from surgery. A patient with a pulmonary condition can be remotely monitored to ensure they’re complying with prescribed inhalers.
TELEMEDICINE
Remote devices and communications technology enable medical professionals to provide care long-distance. Changes will be coming to this arena this year when the CMS waivers enacted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic begin to expire, but telemedicine is here to stay.
In 2023, we expect to see the development of hybrid care, combining face-to-face and remote services. In particular, patients who suffer from chronic conditions will be the biggest beneficiaries of telehealth sessions with their healthcare providers.
HOSPITAL-IN-THE-HOME (HIH)
Pioneered by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Public Health, the “hospital-in-the-home” has the potential to care for acutely ill older patients in the comfort and safety of their homes, away from serious hospital-acquired illnesses and infections. Remote patient monitoring and telemedicine enable virtual visits, symptom surveys, medication reminders and more.
The VA has a hospital-in-the-home initiative that has been implemented at a dozen VA facilities around the country. In 2023, we expect to see more health systems adopting this approach to not only improve the patient experience, but also to constrain increasing costs.
3. THE MEDICAL METAVERSE
The term “metaverse” is rather broadly defined as a newer version of the internet that, in the words of Forbes, “will take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and ever-increasing connectivity (for example, 5G networks) to create online environments that are more immersive, experiential and interactive than what we have today.”
So, imagine a telehealth visit that is more “telepresence.” The healthcare workers and patients feel like they’re in the same room without being in the same room. The goals include helping physicians make decisions, reducing financial risk, and managing chronic diseases. Let’s look at some of these important digital health trends.
AR AND VR
Augmented reality (AR) overlays an image onto a physical environment, while virtual reality (VR) creates an environment with which a user interacts. Both have broad implications in healthcare.
For example, AR could project images onto a patient during surgery, helping to guide the surgeon’s actions. VR, meanwhile, can simulate the effects of neurological or mental health disorders, such as Parkinson’s and PTSD, giving healthcare professionals insight into how these conditions are affecting their patients.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the marketing of a growing number of devices across different fields of medicine, including orthopedics and radiology. It expects rapid growth in this type of high-powered medical equipment. As one example: In 2022, the FDA cleared Surgical Theater's SpineAR SNAP, which delivers an augmented view of critical structures and pathology to a surgeon’s microscopic viewer for better visual awareness during spine surgery.
AI AND ML
Machine learning (ML) is the most common form of artificial intelligence (AI), and it is at the core of many AI applications in healthcare. The most common application of traditional machine learning is predictive analytics — predicting which treatments are likely to succeed based on patient attributes and the treatment context.
The most complex forms of machine learning involve deep learning, or neural network models. They provide many levels of features and variables that could predict health outcomes. Faster processing speeds and cloud capacity mean that ML could uncover hidden aspects of a healthcare situation, for example, whether a lesion found on a CT scan is cancerous. AI and ML is expected to have a tremendous impact on radiology in the future.
4. BIG DATA ANALYTICS
The healthcare industry generates tons of data from electronic health records, insurance claims, genomic and diagnostic tests, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). We’ve seen how big data is being used in diagnosis, care and prevention. In this section, we’ll look at several other ways Big Data impacts healthcare.
DATA SECURITY
Digital health records are the frequent targets of cyberattackers. The medical industry takes the security of patient data seriously, otherwise it could be subject to severe fines and penalties.
One emerging healthcare technology trend is zero-trust architecture, which the Biden Administration mandated for federal agencies and which is being adopted by private enterprise. Essentially, zero-trust means that a computer system assumes every interaction is a potential attack and continuously verifies users and their access. AI and ML play an important role in this form of data security.
SDV INTERNATIONAL helps healthcare companies and agencies move to cloud providers such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. This allows them to “inherit” security controls, activate encryption, and strong multi-factor authentication for their healthcare data.
SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
The healthcare sector uses supply chain data analytics tools to drive down supply costs while building agility and resilience. Supply chain analytics can help a healthcare organization:
Better detect and predict fluctuations in demand or potential supply disruption.
More quickly identify and resolve supply chain issues.
Mitigate shortages in supplies and drugs.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Hospitals are continually under scrutiny by state and federal agencies. Healthcare organizations must comply with many regulations on how to report patient care and financial data. Data analytics help hospital administrators with this responsibility, in addition to providing a clear-cut view of costs and revenue.
TRACKING HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
SDV INTERNATIONAL has been providing military and civilian healthcare organizations with complementary, often integrated, professional solutions since 2008. We help them stay on top of and make the most of digital health trends. Our solutions include:
Health information technology (HIT) and cybersecurity
Health information management (HIM), including medical record coding
Healthcare administration workflow engineering
Peer review and other types of healthcare consulting
Contact SDV INTERNATIONAL today at our website, by calling 800-738-0669 or by emailing info@SDVInternational.com.