“In a few years, the idea of receiving medical treatment exclusively at a doctor’s office or hospital will seem quaint.” – Harvard Business Review
India has over a lakh of healthcare providers including multi-speciality hospitals, government hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and primary care centres. There are more than 60% of them that operate without any IT system or have even basic digitalisation in place.
Hospitals today have a critical need to make information accessible, secure, and shared to enable better clinical decision support, identifying disease patterns and other initiatives to improve health outcomes of citizens.
Today, Health Insurance is becoming mainstream, and with the recent launch of the nationwide Ayushman Bharat scheme, it becomes very important for the hospitals to have a system in place to quickly process the claims, speed-up treatment initiation and eliminate fraudulent claims.
There has been significant advance in technologies coupled with a convergence of industries ranging from healthcare, pharmaceutical, medical devices, telecommunication to insurance. This convergence is going to be continuous and additional industries ranging from wellness providers to Nano technology innovators are now impacting how healthcare services are being delivered. This landscape has opened up a whole new Blue Ocean for creating healthcare business applications.
The opportunities to create a significant impact are further enhanced by the advent and adoption of cutting edge technologies including:
- Blockchain
- Artificial Intelligence
- Mobile Health
- Telemedicine
Blockchain
Blockchain is gaining practical applications in various healthcare IT solutions. Blockchain works on the basis of distributed database or ledger network. This creates an extremely safe environment as the data access is regulated and closely guarded. A PHR developed using blockchain can solve issues pertaining to storage of electronic medical records. A PHR can potentially become a game changer and over a period of time replace EMRs & EHRs.
Blockchain based PHR allows individuals to have the rightful ownership of their own medical records, eliminating the custodian based models currently being followed.
Artificial Intelligence
AI finds significant applications in Radiology, Telehealth and other clinical practices. AI plays a key role in clinical decision support system, system-aided diagnosis creation of treatment protocols.
Today Physicians can dictate directly in to the system and the system converts it to text and AI layers fill in the correct and relevant fields of the EMR. Usually, a physician takes about 15-20 minutes to complete typing one EMR. Those who are actively using speech recognition to fill EMR save time up to 70-80%.
The insurance industry needs to have AI enabled pre-authorization & claims processing, fraud detection and prevention functions. The benefits from these will include:
- Pre-Authorization – faster access to treatment
- Claims – Improving human efficiencies leading to lowered cost of operations
- Fraud detection and prevention – Ensuring optimum utilization for health benefits and ultimately decreasing the national financial impact to provide citizens with better healthcare.
Mobile Health
Mobile health Applications are becoming patient friendly allowing engagement, patient monitoring and supporting healthcare workflows across the care continuum. Some applications are integrated with EMRs, allowing doctors and healthcare professionals to view patient information on multiple devices when required. It helps in making timely decisions for treatment plans and care.
Telemedicine
There are many rural areas and locations in the country that still lack appropriate care facilities. Traveling to a nearest available facility involves spending significant time and money besides loss of livelihood earnings.
Telemedicine can play a vital role in ensuring healthcare consultations are made available on demand where medical care and doctors are not physically present. Telemedicine solutions allow healthcare professionals utilize information and communication technologies to diagnose, and suggest treatment options besides being used from preventative and prophylactic initiatives.
Addressing funding and implementation challenges faced by Healthcare service providers
Many healthcare providers face challenges while obtaining funding for their technology needs. However, it is not just the costs that are deterrents, but the key issues that need to be addressed include:
- Assessment of their technology needs, many hospitals do not fully understand how leading edge technologies can help them from multiple aspects
- Identifying appropriate technology partners, many hospitals choose vendors with limited capabilities thereby hampering addressing of future needs
- Struggle with key issues addressing decisions of build vs buy, insourcing vs outsourcing, licensing options and a whole lot of options that are not clearly understood
- Advocating the need to adapt technology as a core part of healthcare businesses and services
Healthcare IT companies should play a key role in addressing the challenges faced by healthcare providers and must:
- Look at taking up a Partner instead a Vendor approach
- Provide innovative financial models
- Pursue outcome-based approaches
- Create options to reduce costs by innovative means including co/ownership of pertinent data
Today, we have the opportunity of creating a seamless healthcare ecosystem bolstered and augmented by technology. We can leap frog to the leadership position in the world.
About the Author:
Ashvini Danigond is a Successful Global Entrepreneur working on Innovations in Healthcare IT. Ashvini heads Manorama Infosolutions as Executive Director & CEO; formulating and executing the company’s overall techno-commercial strategy. She founded the Company in 2002 with an aim to provide unparalleled IT enabled Solutions for Healthcare Industry. She is a dynamic leader with an MBA in Healthcare IT, and Masters in Computer Science & Software. Her initiatives to provide Quality services for Population Health using automation and analytics with innovation in ERP transforms user and customer experiences, opening new business opportunities. Tapping the breakthrough Technology along with software development expertise, she has developed Solutions addressing the Challenges of Healthcare.
Ashvini has assisted some of the largest healthcare Projects across the globe utilizing ERP automation to increase efficiency, reduce costs & improve patient experiences. Providing customized solutions, she has taken a practical hands-on approach to deliver projects with a constant focus on the client’s mission and business objectives. Her company delivers comprehensive portfolio of Healthcare Solutions and services catering to Public, Government & Private sector. With her incredible business acumen and effective collaboration, she has scaled Manorama Infosoutions and reached to International geographies including Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa.
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