Digital Transformation healthcare in COVID-19
In COVID-19, healthcare has fallen behind other industries in terms of digital transformation. After then, there was an epidemic. Thanks to digital transformation, consumers now have a safer method to identify, access, and pay for medical care.
The global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of healthcare delivery to patients throughout the world, presenting a challenge to healthcare practitioners in treating patients with coronavirus and providing optimal care to non-COVID patients.
What is digital transformation in healthcare?
In healthcare, digital transformation refers to applying cutting-edge technology, techniques, and procedures to provide long-term value to patients, healthcare professionals, and healthcare organizations.
To maximize advantages, it’s all about adopting and implementing sophisticated technology and creative techniques. As a result, you can help lead and build amazing digital transformation and healthcare solutions.
How is digital transformation in healthcare useful?
Healthcare professionals, institutions, and organizations may significantly increase their ability to give better treatment to patients and help them live healthier and longer lives through digital transformation.
Healthcare becomes more productive as a result of various digital experiences:
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Health Wearables:
In the past, individuals were satisfied with going to the doctor once a year for a physical and only seeing doctors when anything went wrong.
On the other hand, patients nowadays are primarily concerned with maintaining their health and increasingly seek health-related information.
As a result, consumers are increasingly investing in wearable technology devices to track key health measures and predict the likelihood of a severe health crisis.
Some of these health wearable devices that are popular include:
- Exercise trackers
- Fitness bands
- Oximeters
- Sweat meters (used for tracking blood sugar levels in diabetic patients.)
These linked wearable gadgets can assist healthcare practitioners in capturing vital medical information from patients in real-time and obtaining a more accurate assessment of their health.
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Patient Portals:
Patient portals are another popular digital transformation concept in healthcare. As the name implies, patient portals are online platforms that allow patients to access their medical information, make appointments, and communicate with doctors, among other things.
Patients may use patient portals to check their medical history, prescriptions, and visit notes from doctors online, but they can also share this information with multiple healthcare providers.
Consequently, there is no need to physically transmit or distribute medical records, which is highly convenient for patients and healthcare providers.
Users may keep track of both basic medications and specialist visits using the site. They may also contact and message physicians using the platform.
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Data Aggregation:
Patient portals are an excellent way to collect data from patients. However, this data must now be aggregated by healthcare facilities and organizations.
It is because most hospitals today receive huge volumes of data from a variety of sources, including:
- Patient-provided data
- Lab results
- Pharmacy data
- Internal & external electronic health records (EHR)
- Data from medical devices like health wearables
- Imaging data
- Insurance claims
When you have data pouring in from various sources, it’s easy to ignore vital patient information. Without having to worry about missing crucial patient data, data aggregation can assist hospitals in making timely and informed patient-care choices.
To put it another way, data aggregation aids in the improvement of patient care while also lowering expenses. It compiles all data into a comprehensive patient profile, substantially reducing the time required to sift through patient data and resulting in shorter patient wait times.
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Telehealth & Virtual Doctor Visits:
Virtual doctor visits have become one of the fastest-growing trends in healthcare since the COVID-19 Pandemic. As the name indicates, virtual doctor visits allow patients to communicate with doctors via video chats, removing the need to visit their clinics.
Telehealth and virtual medical appointments have several advantages.
- For starters, doctors may now conduct patient visits with ease.
- Easily and swiftly screen patients and only arrange in-person appointments if specific follow-ups are required.
- Virtual visits save time for patients because they no longer have to travel to physicians’ offices or hospitals and wait in waiting rooms.
- On-Demand Healthcare:
People have become more mobile during the last decade, forcing many companies to adopt the on-demand economy. As a result, not just patients but also doctors are no longer bound by a single organization. intelyConnect offers a no-code and low-code approach to healthcare data integration and interoperability
They are now keener to work for various healthcare organizations simultaneously.
Consequently, doctors’ schedules have grown more flexible in providing medical services, and they can now more readily adjust to their patients’ changing needs.
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Disease History Analysis:
Along with On-Demand Healthcare Solutions, a growing number of digital healthcare tools are being developed to assist doctors in analyzing a patient’s medical history and providing the best therapy available.
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AI Screening:
AI screening, which uses artificial intelligence technology, is another developing trend in digital transformation in healthcare. It assists hospital workers in determining which patients require immediate attention and directing them to the right resources.
To relieve the burden on medical employees, several hospitals have successfully used AI-based chatbots and speech systems to screen patients to relieve the burden on medical employees.
AI Screening, for example, might assist patients in finding their way to the appointment booking line, the laboratory, or the pharmacy.
Benefits of Digital Transformation in the Healthcare:
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Reduced Costs:
Digital transformation promotes process automation, allowing healthcare institutes and companies to provide cost-effective services while eliminating wasteful expenditure on traditional healthcare services.
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Optimized Workflow:
Digital transformation can replace paper records with digital records, shorten patient examination times, and make more accessible and efficient patient health records.
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Improved Connection with Patients:
Through video calls and chats, digital transformation can enable better and more effective online interaction with patients.
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Electronic Medical Records Secure Database:
In healthcare, digital transformation allows you to construct a secure database for encrypting, storing, and accessing patient medical records.
It allows healthcare professionals, laboratories, and medical specialists to share them on demand.
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Internal Communication:
The healthcare business relies heavily on communication to offer effective treatment to patients. Furthermore, digital transformation allows for more efficient and seamless communication among all stakeholders.
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Better Time Management:
In the healthcare business, digital transformation may save a lot of time. Moreover, 24/7 access to the patient’s health information and real-time coordination might save many lives.
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Healthcare Services that are Better:
Because the healthcare sector is centered on the patient, employing innovative techniques for accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment.
The integration of diverse technologies helps healthcare professionals and institutes to give more effective and individualized treatment to patients through digital transformation.
Challenges of Digital Transformation in Healthcare:
Digital transformation is a difficult task, particularly in conventional business-like healthcare. However, all healthcare facilities and enterprises must undergo digital transformation to remain competitive.
The most major obstacles (along with their answers) that healthcare organizations typically face while adopting digital transformation are described below.
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Data Security:
Data security is a top priority for all healthcare organizations regarding digital transformation. However, because hackers frequently target private, sensitive, and highly valued personal health data, they might disrupt medical treatment.
A malware assault against a private hospital, for example, may appear to be low-risk. However, such an assault might easily compromise patients’ privacy, resulting in a hospital’s ruined image, fraud, discrimination, and other issues.
As a result, it is strongly advised to take the necessary steps to improve security and avoid cyberattacks.
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The Cost Element:
The cost factor is why many healthcare institutes, organizations, and businesses are deferring digital transformation efforts.
Regrettably, many healthcare companies are primarily concerned with the return on investment (ROI), ignoring the value proposition that digital transformation may provide.
Though digital transformation in healthcare indeed necessitates significant technological expenditures and collaboration with a software development firm.
However, digital transformation can provide more scalability, profitability, and income than the old way.
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Resistance to Change:
According to a poll, most healthcare professionals don’t have enough time to learn how to utilize new technologies due to their busy schedules.
Ironically, they spend a lot of time on hospital administrative activities that might simply automate with digital transformation.
The goal of digital transformation is to change the way healthcare organizations and professionals think and operate. As a result, overcoming opposition to changing mentality is critical before going on the digital transformation journey.
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Complying with HIPAA Regulations:
The final issue resulting from digital transformation in healthcare is ensuring compliance with HIPAA Regulations.
The HIPPA law ensures that people’s medical records and private health information are safe. This rule was enacted to allow people to control how their medical records are used and shared.
Conclusion:
In healthcare, digital change is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. It has sparked the development of various new healthcare services, resulting in enhanced patient care and results.
intelyConnect created a variety of software solutions for various sectors, including healthcare.
In addition, digital transformation can change patient care and allow healthcare organizations and professionals to spend less time on administrative activities. Visit intely.io or schedule a demo today.