The Future of Healthcare - What Will It Look Like?
New digital technologies are replacing the one-size-fits-all concept of healthcare visits in offices. For certain healthcare players, however, change will require more than just business reinvention. Technology will organize the ever-increasing volume of patient data, enabling doctors to make better decisions. In addition, it will encourage mid-level employees to perform some tasks that were previously reserved for doctors.
Hospital Robotics
There are just not enough medical personnel to go around due to aging populations and declining healthcare workforces. Robots can help in this situation. Medical robots increase hospital and clinic productivity by automating supplies delivery, cleaning, and staff interaction with patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they have shown to be especially helpful in lowering pathogen exposure in the operating room. Robotic surgery is used in minimally invasive treatments such as kidney transplants, heart valve replacements, and biopsies. Additionally, they are able to execute robotic gynecological operations, which require less recovery time and less incisions than open surgery. Moreover, there are care robots like the Moxi twins at Cedars-Sinai that fly along hospital corridors to bring nurses snacks, medicine, and linens. These tiny creatures can move stuff between departments, sanitize rooms, and save hours of labor in addition to raising morale. They can even automatically refill shelves and administer medication from the pharmacy.
Self-Evaluation and Self-Treating
The healthcare sector will transition to a more customer-focused paradigm as customers take a more active role in managing their own health. Technology, data interoperability, legislation, and reimbursement will all play a role in this change. Patients will self-diagnose and take care of themselves with the help of telemedicine and connected devices. Instead of going to the doctor to remedy something that is already broken, people will proactively track and record their own data to stop things from getting worse. Healthcare workers will find it difficult to keep up with the nearly daily development of new medications and therapies. Many will thus pass up the chance to provide patients with the greatest medication possible. Physicians will therefore go to genomic practitioners for assistance in treating diseases like cancer, neurological disorders, and metabolic disorders—all of which can be cured through the use of gene editing methods like CRISPR. Hospitals will need to maintain current knowledge of these topics as a core skill.
Experts in Every Field
The public's fear of the pandemic, the emergence of new health disruptors, and sector reforms are driving changes in health systems that call for greater individualization, personalization, and transparency. They also need to deal with the increasing demand for new services and specializations that center on health-related well-being. As a result, the healthcare sector will keep becoming increasingly specialized. Patients will have more access to information about themselves and their needs from a wider range of sources as technology develops, and they will be able to video consult with practitioners directly over the Internet, often doing away with the need for hospital visits. To get their companies ready for the move toward real-time data visualization, healthcare managers need to stay abreast of emerging technological advancements. They can use this to create PHM programs that maximize costs and outcomes for their target demographics. It is imperative for them to implement comprehensive information governance protocols to guarantee that solely authorized persons possess access to their confidential data.
The Things Network
Numerous businesses are already changing as a result of the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT technology has enabled personalized care and health data tracking in the medical field. IoT devices have the ability to transmit patient data to a central computer, which interprets it using algorithms. This may result in an alert being issued to physicians, who, using the information at hand, may then administer prompt therapy. The Internet of Things has also revolutionized fetal surgery and scanning. This implies that illnesses or other problems can be identified prior to the baby's birth, and a strategy can be implemented to prevent them. This is healthcare's future, and it appears to be a pretty bright one. Businesses with strong customer ties will benefit as customers take greater control over their healthcare. These might include cutting-edge, non-legacy technology companies that deliver healthcare as a service. Compared to traditional hospitals, they probably have lower costs and larger EBITDA margins.
