Tag: Healthcare Sector
Digital Tools That Can Improve the Future Of Healthcare
Health Care providers understand that they need to up their game. This is the digital age and consumers are looking for a hassle-free digital front-end experience when interacting with healthcare providers. They are more aware and are used to the conveniences afforded by online banking, personalized shopping and other aspects of CX provided by retailers and the service industry. They expect the same when it comes to health care.
True care redesign is what we are talking about. This involves much more than revamping your website or providing updates. It means high-quality, effective, accessible and affordable health care through digital tools. The future is here, and health care providers must keep up.
How Digital Transformation Is Improvising Healthcare Services
A McKinsey report showed that “total EBITDA in the healthcare services and technology market has the potential to increase from $35 billion in 2016 to close to $50 billion in 2021. These figures suggest a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 7%, continuing the trajectory these players have experienced in recent years.”
This shows the growing role of technology in healthcare. Technological advances like advanced analytics, IoT (Internet of Things), interoperability and machine learning have radicalized the healthcare sector and opened up new possibilities that were unfathomable in the past. The same McKinsey report stated that these advances “present important opportunities to address the half a trillion dollars of annual spending resulting from low productivity and waste.”
Apart from this, technology in the healthcare sector is being re-ordered by tech-enabled customers to achieve the following:
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Pricing transparency
Today’s consumers value options and being able to get value for their money. Pricing transparency applications and online scheduling tools allow consumers to sift through different healthcare providers. Consumes value this as they no longer have to settle for the limitations in benefits or exorbitant prices in healthcare.
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Accessibility
Technology has now made it possible for people to have access to and control their health data. As befitting an informed health consumer, they can use information like patient history, medical records and other details as they choose. This way, digital tools are breaking the information asymmetry in healthcare.
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Preference
Digital tools are placing healthcare in the palm of our hands. They have made it possible for consumers to manage their healthcare according to their preference. They can now monitor and manage any aspect of their health and healthcare spending in the way that they prefer.
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Convenience
A study conducted within Delaware-based Nemours Children’s Health System’s pediatric sports medicine practice compared the satisfaction rates of telemedicine patients in comparison to patients who opted for in-person consultations. The results of the study showed that those who opted for telemedicine experienced shorter waiting times, and saved more time and money (average of $50). The study went on to report that 99% of respondents said that they would recommend telemedicine to other families and 98% said that they would opt for telemedicine again. Consumers obviously value this convenience and telemedicine is rapidly gaining ground.
The impact of telemedicine and digital tools is being recognized by governments as well. The Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act of 2017 was reintroduced this week and its focus is to give healthcare providers the freedom to experiment with telehealth in alternative payment models and incentive programs. The bill also furthered the expansion of remote patient monitoring programs for chronic care, underserved and remote populations. Sen Ben Cardin (D-Md.) who supports the bill says: “Greater use of technology to connect patients and doctors will benefit both with better outcomes, as well as more timely and efficient use of resources.” The outcome of the bill was estimated to be government savings of at least $1.8 billion over 10 years, offsetting projected costs of $1.1 billion.
Digital tools that can improve the future of healthcare
Digital tools are reshaping the landscape of healthcare in a significant way, much beyond just reducing wait times and costs. Technologies like Big Data, IoT and Artificial Intelligence have contributed much in the healthcare sector, with digital tools being designed for diagnosis, consultation, preventive medicine, drug testing and much more. With software that processes data and “learns” how to apply it with the help of machine learning and AI, the possibilities are endless.
Case in Point: Ultronics
Ultronics is a digital tool that has been developed by researchers at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, UK. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, this tool has the potential to radicalize the diagnosis of heart disease and improves diagnostic accuracy by 90%. Ultronics analyzes nearly 80,000 data points from every echocardiogram image and renders a near perfect diagnosis that could save millions of lives and has been predicted to save the UK’s National Health System GBP 300 million a year.
Now that’s just the beginning of what digital technology could bring to the table in the future of the healthcare sector. Here are 5 types of digital tools that are gaining popularity in the healthcare sector now:
1. Self-service tools
These tools help in streamlining patient appointments with the doctor and include features like online appointment scheduling, electronic payment, auto-renewal of prescriptions and more. These tools give patients a way to manage their health without the hassle of dealing with the administration.
Further Reading: Check out how Fingent helped streamline healthcare operations with an online service platform.
2. Wellness tools
These tools include technology that helps you monitor the status of your health and maintain your wellness through fitness coaching, real-time consultation and more. These include apps as well as wearable technology that helps people stay on top of their health goals.
Applications based on this concept help users schedule consultations, calculate fitness levels, schedule sessions, set goals, generate exercises and record performance and change exercise plans accordingly.
Further Reading: Read more about how Fingent helped create a fitness Regimen app for trainers.
3. Clinical transparency tools
These tools are designed to decrease information asymmetry and give consumers the necessary data to make informed decisions with regard to their healthcare. By giving patients insights into the performance of different providers and a transparent view across disciplines, these tools help in clinical decision making.
A good tool will have interactive, visual graphs linked across multiple disciplines, real-time access to vital information, detailed analysis of performance across parameters, and highlight key performance issues and indicators.
Further Reading: Read on the case study to know how Fingent implied Data Visualization to improve hospital performance.
4. Financial transparency tools
These tools will give consumers access to the different financial aspect of health care, including options in insurance, fees charged by different health care providers and more. This will help them compare the prices and benefits offered and make informed financial decisions.
Further Reading: Read on to learn how automation is revolutionizing modern healthcare.
5. Remote Monitoring tools
These tools allow for effective remote monitoring and care and seamless e-visits with providers. With these tools, a doctor can monitor the progress of a patient, assign reminders and tasks for the patient and engage with caretakers for better health care.
Further Reading: Find how Fingent’s healthcare technology solution helped improve collaboration between doctors, patients, and patient caregivers.
Join The Digital Revolution in Healthcare
“The reality out there is the system is complex, and we all own a part of that, whether you’re on the payer side or the provider side,” says Gregory Brown, a divisional senior vice president at Health Care Service Corp. “We need to invest in our digital capabilities in a way that will advance simplifying the system and help educate our consumer base out there.”
Fingent has worked with clients across the healthcare sector to achieve this goal. Give us a call and get set to join the digital revolution to better healthcare.
Automatic control, which has been the foundation of automation, has been here for centuries. As far back as the 17th century, systems with automatic control devised for the regulation of steam engines, temperature control, and other applications. Automation has come a long way since then. Its application in the Health care sector that has been especially noteworthy since it has made huge strides in saving costs, labor, and lives! This blog will have an in-depth into how automation is revolutionizing the health care sector.
The Healthcare Industry – An Overview
Before we get into the role automation has played in the healthcare sector, it makes sense to have an overview of how the Healthcare Industry has been doing. Innovation and R&D in the past few decades have contributed to more effective medicines, improved diagnostic aids, and technological solutions to non-invasive procedures. These are naming just a few of the accomplishments in the healthcare industry.
Along with the accomplishments, there have been a few challenges as well. The availability of quality and affordable healthcare for its people is an important indicator of how well a nation fares on the Human Development Index (HDI). The problem is that even developed countries are struggling to meet this need effectively. There are many reasons for this and here are a few of them.
1) Rising Expenditures
There are huge investments being made in the healthcare sector in terms of funding drug discovery and providing facilities. This often translates into enormous hospital bills, which reaches down to patients.
A Research Gate study showed that supply expense per patient admission in the US was estimated to be $4,470! The disproportionate constraint of health insurance reimbursements makes the problem worse. The growing demand for procedures requiring medical devices is a further strain on the pockets of health care providers. For example, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) predicts that the number of knee replacements will expand by 673% by the year 2030. Identifying R&D opportunities for drug discovery also involves large expenses and involves several data assimilation and regulatory challenges. Large volumes of data and insights are involved, and this expends time and cost.
Balancing costs and health outcomes require an intelligent assessment by formulary committees, which takes into consideration numerous data variables.
2) Appointment Scheduling
A survey of nearly 500 healthcare professionals on the Top Challenges for Medical Practices showed that lost revenue from broken appointments was the top challenge with 49.5% respondents voting for this. Other challenges included:
- Low response to recall efforts
- Not enough staff time to call patients
- Keeping updated patient contact information
- Lack of an efficient way to reach patients via text message
- Not connecting with enough patients with a reminder phone call
3) Security
Patients entrust private information to health care providers, including social security numbers and financial details. The theft of such data could be catastrophic, to say the least. Reports show that the highest data breach resolution costs in the United States are for healthcare data breaches, which typically cost an average of $408 per record. The time taken to identify and contain a breach includes significant losses. Above all, the loss of trust and reputation with customers could deal a fatal blow to health care providers.
What is Data Automation
Automation is when manual tasks are reduced by the use of information technology. Repetitive tasks that require least human intervention benefit the most from automation. Data automation is the process when programming takes care of the assimilation, storage, and analysis of data.
Data automation usually involves:
- Extraction: Multiple open data sources are mined for relevant information.
- Transformation: The data is converted into a format that can be used by machines.
- Loading: The data is then fed into the system to serve as the raw material for automation.
Big Data Automation (BDA), is a broad concept that makes use of innovation and IT resources to create value. A few aspects of Big Data automation were brought out in a whitepaper by WhereScape. The WP has Barry Devlin describing Big Data automation as follows:
In addition to reducing manual labor in the collection and analysis of data, automation can help reduce administrative workloads and improve patient care on many levels. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the next level in automation. This uses machine learning and AI to effectively handle tasks that are done manually. RPA has made huge strides in Healthcare. A Deloitte article entitled “RPA in Health Care Can Improve Outcomes for All “puts it well: ‘RPA can help health care and life sciences organizations collect and translate patient and transactional data into meaningful, actionable formats; streamline compliance-related processes; and relieve employees of some tasks they now perform.’ Here are some ways in which automation is revolutionizing the healthcare industry: As we discussed earlier, a major cause of rising healthcare costs is the growing demand for medical devices and the innovation costs involved in drug discovery. Automation can greatly aid in this. Recently, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb revealed a budget action plan, which focused on modernizing drug and device production and using innovation to minimize costs and advance public health priorities. Some of the highlights were to enlist “as many as 10 million electronic medical records to speed the regulator’s ability to address emerging safety concerns for drugs, biologics and medical devices.” This would help in fast-tracking the assessment of safety and effectiveness of the drugs and devices. The collection and analysis of data would also support drug discovery and new product functions. Consider the savings in cost and time if tasks like scheduling appointments and reminders would be automated. Apps that automate these tasks have freed up valuable staff and resources allowing them to concentrate on patient care. Some features that these apps make possible: A manual error is often the cause for most security breaches. By automating data processing and sharing, healthcare companies can ensure that handling of data by humans is minimized. With the help of AI and automation, healthcare providers can enable alerts, monitoring, and prioritization of abnormal behavior. Predictive analysis, diagnosis, and recommendations can also be automated ensuring that the system continuously learns to detect and eliminate security vulnerabilities. While we considered just three challenges and the ways in which automation is helping to resolve these challenges, there are many more. Fingent works with various clients in the healthcare sector to design customized applications to help automate their critical processes. Drop us a message to learn how we can help. How Automation Is Revolutionizing Health Care Sector
1) Solving Rising Costs
2) Appointment Scheduling Solutions
3) Security Solutions