The need to keep people socially distant in a contagious condition of the pandemic has led the healthcare industry to reexamine how they serve their customers and treat their patients. We have seen how emerging technologies, like AI & Automation, are helping to fight the pandemic, but let’s talk about the new dimensions of consumer technologies in healthcare app development.
The Scene Before The Pandemic
It may come as a surprise to many people, but the adoption of digital health had stalled before the pandemic. It is as per Accenture’s 2020 Digital Health Consumer Survey. According to the report, Covid-19 accelerated the adoption of digital health, but mostly it happened because people lowered their expectations for the experience quality. The surge may have occurred due to customers’ (patients’) inability to visit hospitals and clinics during the contagion, and they have no alternative but to interact with healthcare digitally.
It’s not that consumers are not interested in digital services. However, a cumbersome app experience alienates them. On top of that, the concerns over privacy, security, and trust persist. Also, the integration of new technologies and digital tools into healthcare app development and other digital services has its own challenges. Later in this article, we’ll discuss how digital health applications should be people-centric. First, let us see a couple of more insights to understand the patient’s point of view better from the report:
- 70% of healthcare consumers are concerned about their data privacy and commercial tracking of their online activities.
- 90% of healthcare executives believe that health organizations need to elevate some control over their information, making them an active partner rather than a passive consumer in a post-digital world.
Along with AI and Automation, healthcare applications must include people-centric features and processes and adopt a transparent and collaborative approach with their users. Regarding privacy, people trust their hospitals and doctors (more than 80%) much more than tech companies (45%) and the government(38%). So, data confidentiality between a doctor and his/her patient should remain the primary aim of health apps.
Digital Imaging Reports
Necessity is the mother of invention. COVID-19 has prompted the sector to better use existing technologies in healthcare app development. It means finding solutions that are cost-effective and functionally more efficient. One of the examples is the delivery of image-based medical reports, like MRI and CT Scans. Data security, again, is a critical concern in this transaction.
Encryption could come as a solution in digital storage, delivery, and access of imaging reports. Health and wellness applications with end-to-end encryption can become a tool for conveniently viewing medical records and images from anywhere on mobile screens.
Data Analytics to Improve Patient Safety
Speaking of improving data analytics in digital healthcare, there is another news story that dropped last week. HCA Healthcare and Google have entered into a multi-year partnership to develop a secure and comprehensive data analytics platform.
The partnership of HCL with Google Cloud could empower nurses, doctors, and healthcare executives with workflow tools, analysis, and alerts on their mobile devices to quickly respond to changes in a patient’s condition. The new algorithm development for data analytics and crunching could improve patient safety and aid new treatment development.
In any such deal, the patient’s data privacy should be of paramount importance. We have seen that patients trust the clinics and hospitals more than the tech companies when it comes to their data. Therefore, healthcare institutions, like HCL, should only allow tech companies to access their data after removing any patient-identifiable marks from them. Only the stats should be there for analytics.
Alternatively, these companies can help healthcare organizations by developing cloud-based analytic tools without getting patient records themselves. Moreover, the cloud should accelerate innovation, particularly in terms of data interoperability, which is crucial for simplifying operations and increasing patient safety.
Telehealth
We’re continuously expanding our data storing and handling capacities and increasing our internet speeds. The number of internet users in the USA has surged from 50% in 2000 to 93% in 2020. There were 4.66 billion active internet users globally in January 2021, accounting for 59.5 percent of the global population. The unprecedented internet penetration has paved the way for more on-demand healthcare services that people can access through their mobile phones.
According to Wikipedia, telehealth is nothing but disseminating health-related services and information using electronic information and communications technology. Advanced technologies, like high-speed internet, smartphones and PC cameras, etc., have enabled doctors to consult patients using HIPAA (health information privacy-complaint) video-conferencing tools.
Sensor devices have also enabled remote diagnosis of a patient’s health, and AI and Data Science have enabled rapid analysis and prediction of any health-related risk beforehand. AI algorithms can perform similar or better than humans at numerous tasks, such as interpreting medical imagery or linking symptoms and biomarkers from electronic medical records (EMRs) with disease characterization and prognosis.
Go Minimalist First
In the adoption of digital health, we don’t have to go fancy where it is not required. For mass adoption, let’s stick to simple information sharing, telemedicine, etc. We should, however, apply high-end data security, encryption, and analytics in healthcare app development. The primary focus in a people-centric (for the convenience of patient and doctor both) health application design would be to improve the performance and accuracy first and then add more visualization features.
Way Forward
The future of digital health is going people-centric in design and delivery. Here people aren’t just patients but include doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, and health industry executives. Whatever solution we’re building in health and wellness must take people, not just technology, as the driving force.
From electronic medical records to monitoring applications, from telemedicine to wearable digital devices, all participants in the health ecosystem can be helped to incorporate innovative technologies that are already accessible. However, whichever technology solution proves viable in a given case must always keep the patient and his or her needs at the center of the design and development. And not just accessible, they must be economically sustainable, convenient, and affordable for the population.
Most importantly, to truly make the healthcare consumers partners in the digital health advancements, it is imperative that we also focus on digital health literacy.