With their high demand for security and accuracy, it looks like the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries should be the first ones to embrace digital transformation. Yet, according to 2018 research, this is far from true: only two years back, the digitization had covered as little as seven percent of healthcare and pharmaceutical services. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed the importance of the digital shift for medical firms.
So how can a healthcare company go digital? In this article, we will give you some insights into how you can digitize your medical practice. Read on to learn more!
The Digital Healthcare Trends of 2020
Deciding which emerging technology will bring more value to your healthcare practice can be tricky. The COVID-19 outbreak and the quarantine measures that followed have brought to the fore the telemedicine and IoT technologies, while increasing the need for AI analytics and data security. Let’s now explore the most current digital healthcare trends in more detail.
Telemedicine and mHealth
Building a doctor-on-demand app is one of the steps you can take to digitize your practice. Saving time and expenses, achieving better work-life balance, and maintaining on-going practice even with limited access to healthcare venues are some of the advantages of telemedicine for healthcare practitioners.
mHealth, however, is a broader concept, which refers to mobile healthcare solutions targeting areas like patient-doctor interactions, wellness and fitness, drug intake, medical records, and directories, monitoring patient’s health, and condition, etc.
At VARTEQ we build web and mobile health solutions helping maximize patients’ engagement and ensure their greater connectivity with healthcare teams.
Read also: 4 Major Trends In Mobile Healthcare App Development
Wearable Tech
Another way to approach digitization is to collect and monitor patients’ health metrics in order to prevent serious health conditions. For example, wearable EEG and blood pressure monitors send the patients’ data directly to their physicians so that they could focus on disease prevention rather than treatment.
The use of wearables helps instill in patients a sense of engagement in their own health, gives insurers essential insights about building patients’ insurance plans, and offers patients and fun way to monitor their health and lead a healthier lifestyle.
If you want to start using wearables in your medical practice, think about investing in the software that will help you gain insights from data, and about the underlying infrastructure. At VARTEQ we focus on developing back-end systems for tracking, monitoring and controlling devices, medical equipment, and wearables in order to help clinics make the most of wearable technology and improve patients’ outcomes.
Big Data
Maximizing efficiency by streamlining manual work, reducing expenses, eliminating human error, increasing personalization, and using predictive healthcare to reduce the number of hospital readmissions are some of the advantages of big data in healthcare.
Moreover, data-crunching solutions can help diagnose and find treatment for rare diseases and health conditions. For example, the VARTEQ team has built tools for unique quantified insight into the patient’s neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, in addition to brain oncology, stroke, and neuropsychiatric diseases.
The types of big data in healthcare vary from medical data collected via tests and IoT wearables, EHR and medical imaging, to financial transactions, customer testimonials, and social media. The latter can be used for marketing purposes and to improve customer experience.
The first steps of launching every big data initiative involve collecting all historic data into a unified data pool, defining your goals, identifying data gaps, and deciding on metrics you want to collect. Big data projects are resource-intensive, but the value they bring is totally worth the effort.
Read also: Big Data In Healthcare: Applications and Challenges
Lab Testing
If you run a medical laboratory, meeting patients’ and doctors’ demands for fast and accurate testing can be challenging. Consider using modern lab management systems to streamline a variety of day to day lab functions: from tracking and categorizing reagents and chemicals to billing, storing, and sharing patients’ information with physicians.
VARTEQ’s LIMSys facilitates interactions with laboratories for both clinical and administrative personnel. Through LIMSys, all relevant user roles can have access to respective lab data, manage their patients’ lab work, assign tasks, monitor performance, and execute managerial and administrative functions from anywhere, through web and mobile applications.
Clinic Management Systems
Finally, consider fully automating your clinics’ critical operations with end-to-end platforms like C.O.S. Built by VARTEQ, C.O.S. is a Clinical Office Management Suite designed to cover all of the needs of small and medium clinics. With in-built patients’ Electronic Health Records module, C.O.S. enables medical personnel to easily access patients’ demographic and payment info, as well as the information about their previous visits. The suite has all it takes to enhance patients’ engagement, streamline medical billing, and facilitate patient management.
On top of that, the platform’s reporting and analytics tools enable you to measure your financial outcomes, the success of your practice, and make strategic management decisions.
Important Aspects To Consider While Digitizing Your Medical Practice
Digitizing your medical practice can be a laborious endeavor. The digitization is highly disruptive since it will require you to upgrade some of your IT systems, besides, your personnel will have to learn new skills and adopt a different mindset. There are some aspects that will require your close attention, as you start your digital shift.
Data Protection and HIPAA Compliance
As the number of healthcare data increases, so do the threats to data integrity and security. Medical data is highly sensitive and, for patients, its theft can be detrimental. As you digitize your clinic, you will have to take measures to protect patients’ data and ensure high levels of encryption and anonymization. The VARTEQ HIPAA compliant Data Dazzler tool is a viable solution for medical firms committed to adequately protecting patients’ data.
Integration with Third-Party Systems
As you implement emerging technologies, make sure that they integrate with already existing solutions such as, for example, EHR and HIE. If you’re building a system from scratch, choose a vendor that will build a software with integration and compatibility in mind.
Final Thoughts
Approaching digitization is easier if you start with identifying the shortcomings of your existing medical practice management, as well as your goals. Whether it’s improving patients’ outcomes, maintaining a non-disruptive practice, or increasing revenue, emerging technologies are here to help you.
Read also: How COVID-19 Will Change The Healthcare System
At VARTEQ we specialize in building healthcare solutions across a wide range of medical, clinical, or lab services. If you plan on digitizing your practice, start with getting our free expert advice!