The Deloitte survey has announced a “shift to health from care” in the next decades of medical domain development. Digital technologies play a vital role in this shift.
A combination of competent physical help and digital tools is currently known as the “phygital” approach to healthcare. Digital technologies aid medical staff in many aspects, such as patient treatment, diagnosis, billing, and insurance claims. In the long run, digital tools like data analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) prevent diseases, address consumer needs, and accelerate research. As a result, patients receive help from human experts supported by the IT potential.
In this overview, healthtech companies learn how digital transformation can improve their products and bring them increased customer satisfaction.
Digital transformation within and beyond the hospital walls
The shift to health and general well-being implies that the aim of a medical provider is not disease treatment alone but also providing patients with an excellent customer experience outside medical centers and clinics. Digital solutions successfully serve that aim.
According to the above-mentioned Deloitte research, most respondents admit that technological adoption happens faster inside medical institutions. Here, experts mean remote doctor appointments, automated triage and scheduling for the medical staff, check-in registration of new patients, etc. Technologies enhance the workflows inside clinics and take part of the routine chores off the staff’s shoulders. For instance, self-scheduling apps for nurses allow them to manage their working hours, swap shifts, and contact colleagues. Similar solutions bring medical centers motivated staff, which results in better service and satisfied patients.
The experience of adopting digital technologies outside medical providers might be spotty. First of all, because it is difficult to use the data from patients’ wearable devices. There should be smooth integration with electronic health record systems (EHRs) and analytics tools to interpret the data. Second, doctors should have enough resources to provide feedback to patients’ remote health assessments.
Forming partnerships with healthtech providers brings medical organizations tailored IT solutions and guided digital transformations.
Depending on the situation and requirements, healthtech businesses may offer completely new software developed from scratch or a modernized legacy application. Both options mean changes in the internal workflows that will aim to achieve certain key performance indicators in the future.
Technically speaking
Healthtech partners make the process of implementing digital technologies seamless with the help of different frameworks and tools. Developers from the Belitsoft company prefer to use .NET Core for creating cross-platform server applications. There are several benefits that .NET Core can boast of:
- It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
- It can build microservices and large-scale applications.
- The architecture is divided into modules that are easy to maintain and update.
- It has strong support from the community.
The Chief Innovation Officer at Belitsoft, Dmitry Baraishuk, has 20 years of experience at healthtech. He admits that often clients opt for .NET to .NET Core migration for their products. Thus, one of the latest clients faced limitations of their custom EHR software built on the .NET Framework. End customers, who are medical specialists and organizations, failed to fit the software into their workflows. The migration to the .NET Core has made the solution more flexible, which has led to an increased target audience for the client.
Advantages of digital transformation
The term eHealth is currently used in the USA and Europe to refer to telemedicine and other clinical services that use information technologies. Here are the benefits that digital solutions bring to medical providers and their end customers:
Remote access
According to the American Telemedicine Association, telemedicine is divided into three categories of services: online storage, remote tracking, and live interactions. The first category includes medical data, such as images, lab tests, cardiograms, etc., that are stored in the cloud. Doctors can easily access that information at any time and decide on medication, change treatment strategies, or suggest other medical manipulations.
Remote patient tracking comprises teleradiology, teledermatology, teleneurology, and others. It allows for providing healthcare even in remote areas of the country. Patients save on commuting costs, and medical providers do not have to hire experts to work in secluded areas. Remote monitoring is convenient to control the condition of chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease. Nowadays, there are remote health assessment apps that offer patients to pass a questionnaire and take a blood test with a toolkit sent by post. After a physician receives the results, a video call is arranged to discuss the results and symptoms, do other checks, and develop the action plan.
Telemedicine also improves teaching medical students and upskilling the staff. During the preclinical years, students attend lectures and read books. Telemedicine enriches the available materials for the students and widens the modes of studying. Students can participate in video conferences, make online presentations, share materials with peers, and discuss medical topics. Virtual reality can help students visualize their future experiences.
Cloud computing for better cooperation of patients and doctors
Cloud computing opens many advantages for patients and doctors. As a patient, you would probably prefer to tap your mobile app and check the results of the latest test than wait a long time on the phone or at the hospital help desk. With the possibilities of cloud environments, programmers develop patient platforms, portals, and front-door solutions. Patients proactively monitor their health conditions with the help of those apps.
However, in the medical domain, any tools should be not only convenient but also safe. Both patients and clinics care about their reputations and do not want their sensitive data to appear in the wrong hands. There are several methods for protecting data in the cloud that experts rely on:
- data encryption;
- secure channels for sharing;
- user verification;
- data segmentation;
- access rights.
To sum up
Digital transformation in healthcare influences patients and doctors inside and outside of the medical center walls. Medical providers need competent technological help to be on the frontlines of the competition. With new technologies, they offer expert treatment and contribute to the general well-being of the population. In this cycle of digitalization, healthtech businesses take on the responsibility of providing safe and reliable software solutions.
Dmitry Baraishuk is a partner and Chief Innovation Officer at the software development company Belitsoft (a Noventiq company) with 20 years of expertise in digital healthcare, custom e-learning software development, and Business Intelligence (BI) implementation.
