Health Technology: How Technology Has Been Improving Healthcare Services
While we talk about the challenges, do we mention ‘health’ often? Do we give enough importance to health and balanced living? As we are overcoming the coronavirus spurred crisis, we have learnt well, how important health is. Since then, we have been building our core strength, immunity, mental health, and wellbeing.
Industries across the world have taken note of this update and have been proactively designing tools and services for improving healthcare services. Phillips is, reportedly, set to buy BioTelemetry in a deal that’s worth $2.8 million. BioTelemetry is U.S based firm for cardiac diagnosis and monitoring.
This move, by Phillips – a brand that enjoys a platinum status in the electronics industry, indicates the dominating importance of health and business potential of the healthcare industry. Phillips later diversified into health technology – Royal Phillips.
Is Technology A Real Help For The Healthcare Industry?
Often, we are surrounded by the myth that limits our understanding and drags us to the state of misinformation and makes us the source of chaos. What we often get to hear, that, technology has been spelling doom for us and the younger generation, is totally a myth. Technology has never harmed anyone or even anything. How can we even think like that?
Technology is spearheading developments like never before, particularly in healthcare and services.
One of the most important breakthroughs facilitated by technology in healthcare is telemedicine or telehealth. This concept has been adopted by healthcare services to omit delay in treatment. It uses telecommunications and related technology as a medium between the patient and doctor. Often rural people suffer from lack of timely treatment due to lack of doctors, sparsely located health units, poor connectivity to hospitals and health centres. Telemedicine or telehealth allows them to virtually consult doctors and get a prescription for medicines. It also eliminates the cost of travel and visiting charges, which is a substantial amount. These are two of the most important reasons that added to the increasing popularity of telemedicine or telehealth.
Often, reaching out to the doctor, and on time, are issues and hindrances for effective treatment. Technology dissolves these issues through remote patient monitoring and treatment. Digital technologies are put to use for collecting medical and related health data, sending it to doctors. The doctors study those data to offer suggestions for diagnosis and treatment; uses the data to track improvement in the patient’s condition and how the patient is responding to the suggested treatment. Remote monitoring has been a boon, especially during the pandemic when clinics were temporarily closed, and both the doctors and patients were sceptical in visiting them. Remote monitoring through highly advanced technologies also cut down the cost of travelling and visiting charges to doctors.
Effectiveness of treatment depends on the timely and right diagnosis. Sadly, improper diagnosis is largely responsible for deaths in a year. Verified tools, artificial intelligence and allied diagnosis procedures are proactively countering this issue. In breakthrough research last year, artificial intelligence was found to detect cancer cells more accurately than medical professionals. The experiment was carried out by DeepMind, Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre, Northwestern University and Royal Country Hospital, UK. Artificial Intelligence in healthcare is an enormous contribution by technology in healthcare and services. Going further, it is an AI-based firm from Canada that predicted the Coronavirus breakout, much before WHO and China made it public.
We are in love with DIY things. Can we deny this? When it comes to healthcare, monitoring and regular check-ups, we again turn to DIY ways for help. Such a scenario and more, have pushed up the demand for wearable technology and health devices. Starting from health apps, covering fitness bands, watches and more, millennials are a game for those. These devices collect data from regular use, which are used by the wearer and doctors for monitoring, tracking, and assessing the physical condition of the wearer. These are often used for remote monitoring and even independently by individual wearers. However, it is advisable to use such devices and derive benefits from it by consulting medical professionals only.
Health is the only and precursor to everything that you may ever want to create. So, the last year served us as a learning phase; may this year we implement the lessons for a better life and living. Taking care of your health is definitely one and must be your priority.
