How Technology Has Impacted Healthcare
Healthcare is one of the growing industries in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Especially after the breakout of the COVID 19 pandemic globally, we have realized that a strong healthcare system is essential for any place in the world. With the advent of technology, healthcare has become accessible to many. In Pharmaceutical companies Electronic Batch Records help eliminate costly paperwork errors, enable strategies for improving product quality and process efficiency. Innovative technology has also helped in creating awareness, especially during the pandemic.
Here’s how technology has impacted healthcare industry:
Tele clinics
Tele clinics have been the highlight of the year. With social distancing measures in place and lockdowns making it difficult to travel in your own city, tele clinics have been extremely helpful in connecting patients to doctors.
It is frustrating when you have a chronic illness and you cannot pay a visit to the hospital because you cannot risk getting infected by the corona virus. In this case, tele clinics have proven to be extremely useful. They have allowed doctors to follow up on patients while practicing social distancing, within the comfort of their homes. Patients are only called to a hospital or clinic if it is extremely necessary.
Data Availability
Technological advancement has also improved data accessibility for medical students and healthcare professionals. Gone are the days when you would have to go through hundreds of books in a library to research on a medical case. While books will never lose the value they have, if you have a busy schedule and time constraints, information is available on the go at one tap on your smart phone. Similarly, medical students can learn a lot of practical techniques, better ways of learning, counselling to progress their career on the internet with a number of resources like videos, research papers, and online quizzes.
Better management of health records
Maintaining patient records is a tedious task. However, at the same, it is very important for hospitals to maintain patient records and update them. This is critical for maintaining patient health and allows doctors to treat them accordingly. Before the advent of technology, patient records were stored physically in files and data had to be manually entered. This led to a lot of mistakes and of course waste of time. With improvement in technology, many hospitals have transferred their data to a digital platform. This allows hospital administration to easily keep track and update information. It is also easier to retrieve data in a shorter time, so it can avoid queues in the waiting lounge.
Health Apps
Health apps are of great importance for patients as well as healthcare professionals. These apps allow us to record, maintain, and improve our health. For doctors, it is a great way to help patients with organized data and a friendly user interface. Health apps have made their way to the market pretty quickly. They record a number of things like the amount of calories you consume and how much exercise you do in a day. You can also keep track of blood pressure, and heart rate if you have a chronic cardiac illness or your blood glucose levels if you are diabetic. They are great for reminders too. Many hospitals also have created their own apps where patients can easily find their medical test reports, drug dosage recommendations and any other information they may require for their condition.
As far as healthcare professionals are concerned, there are apps that give accurate information regarding drugs available in the market, any side effects included with the drug, and any interactions with other drugs or food items. So, doctors can have a quick overview while prescribing drugs to their patients.
Communication Is Important
Communication is an important aspect of healthcare. Effective communication is important between a patient and doctor, so doctors can easily identify a disease and then treat it accordingly. Especially during the pandemic we have incurred major losses due to a lack of communication among each other. Technology has allowed us to communicate easily and effectively despite of geographical barriers. We have several video calling platforms, messaging apps, social media platforms to discuss our issues with healthcare professionals. If you have an internet connection you have a number of ways to establish communication with your healthcare provider. You can find right devices at First Energy NJ.
Helps in Gathering Data
A very important aspect of the healthcare industry that we often forget is research. Research is crucial for the development of the industry. It is very important to understand our dynamic ecosystem. Research is necessary to deal with the emergence of new diseases, resistant viral or bacterial strains, or development of stronger antibiotics. All these researches require data gathering, analysis and arrangement. These can be monotonous tasks for humans, so technology helps us gather large amounts of data and process them. Hence, it has an extremely important role in research and development.
Today, there are also software that can identify diseases on a massive scale for example the World Health Organization has been able to categorize diseases, their reasons and signs into a huge database that contains more than 14,000 specific codes. So, technology has helped us to make sense out of massive data.
Final Thoughts
Technology has impacted the healthcare industry massively. It has made things easier for patients and professionals. It has allowed us to be connected and aware, especially during this time of the COVID 19 pandemic. It only depends on how much you benefit from it. While too much reliance can become detrimental healthy use of technology can be beneficial.
