By Sunil Raheja
There has by no means been a more critical time for physicians to assess how they can optimize their time and bandwidth to concentrate on patient care vs. administrative chores.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on more strain on a healthcare program that is currently struggling with the higher demand on it is physicians for direct patient care. There has by no means been a more critical time for physicians to assess how they can optimize their time and bandwidth to concentrate on patient care vs. administrative chores. There are several elements of healthcare and patient care that could be taken care of by technologies as opposed to a doctor or clinician straight becoming obtainable. In India, the demand on medical doctors for direct patient care is difficult. With the developing require for giving access to care and enhancing the high quality of care, the require of the hour is to have medical professional-centric options. It is time that healthcare organizations leverage technological advancements in healthcare to unburden physicians, like digitization of healthcare records, telemedicine, applying major information analytics for pattern recognition, applying voice for ordering lab tests (Natural language processing), automating several of the repetitive tasks, radiology options and clinical selection-creating tools.
There are several patient touch points that require not be dealt with by physicians straight. We inspect 4 such elements of healthcare that can be enhanced by technologies, thereby taking the administrative load off the physicians.
Out-patient Care: Large healthcare organizations in India struggle with maintaining up with the demand on the program at the moment. With job possibilities opening up at multi-city expanse, India is experiencing massive numbers of mobilization of the workforce. This signifies that one doctor would normally treat a patient from birth till later years, which is not the case any longer. Now that the workforce is altering cities regularly, we urgently require to have historical healthcare information of the patient obtainable at all instances. This would allow physicians to evaluation the patient history simply at one-click of the button, eliminating the time lag and expense for repeated tests. Easy access to lab reports and radiology reports can also unburden physicians, this can be managed after there is an on the net program that caters to several platforms with simple synchronisation of computer software. This function really should also be broadly obtainable to independent main care practitioners as properly as specialists. One looming concern that India faces at this time is that prescriptions do not have any finish date, which could potentially lead to adverse outcomes. Physicians create prescriptions and patients get access to that at pharmacists endlessly. It is critical that there are regulations place in spot to curb this. Prescription management and re-order can be managed with technologies integration that tends to make certain that the dosage, frequency, and revision of the prescriptions is accomplished in a timely manner with adherence to regional regulations.
In-Patient Care: Specific to India, amidst several issues that can be resolved via technologies, there are two overarching challenges that can ease the burden on physicians in a hospital set-up. First, the mammoth paperwork that hospitals have to deal with. This paperwork carries via with the patient from the time of admission to discharge. This not only increases the administrative burden on physicians manifolds but is also at the threat of becoming misplaced throughout patient movement and transfers. Hospitals require to make in a robust technological answer that aids with mitigating the require for any paperwork and has simple access via screens, handheld devices, and computer systems. Electronic wellness records would also enhance the high quality of care and ease up the burden on the medical doctors with simple access to historical information, any allergies, prior procedures, medicines and family members history. Second, the seamless coordination with insurance coverage corporations. Due to the heavy paperwork that the patient desires throughout their hospital remain, discharge/checkout becomes a discomfort point, each for the hospital as properly as the patients. Easy access to wellness records would save several hours for the physicians, assistance employees, and patients, as a result enhancing hospital efficiency and patient expertise.
Care coordination: Care coordination for each outpatient and inpatient care is an arduous activity, specially if the quantity of patients per doctor is larger. Automation can play a very important part in bridging the gap among patient and physicians. For chronic patients, platforms and apps can allow answering some typical inquiries, can assist them fully grasp their symptoms and guide patients for the next doctor’s appointment armed with the proper inquiries. Monitoring medication adherence can boost the effectiveness of wellness applications. This would enable physicians to be in continuous touch with the patient, resulting in faster and more rapidly actions with out the require to interact in-individual. The post covid globe has also taught us the value of remote patient monitoring, this brings us to the value of healthcare devices that can monitor and report patient vitals to the physicians, applying technologies like IoT.
Access to care. Another critical aspect of healthcare has come to fore throughout the pandemic is telemedicine. While telemedicine was an current consultation practice in the US but offered the pandemic, it has gained acceptance with the insurance coverage corporations and is becoming practiced properly throughout this time. In India, access to care has been a challenge, and telemedicine is a relatively new idea amongst physicians. The utility and efficacy of telemedicine can be far-reaching beyond the pandemic. The challenges with access in India can be attributed to our vast geography, lack of very good healthcare organizations in remote places, dearth of specialists in rural places, affordability of higher-high quality care and so on. Technology can provide care to patients that face these challenges, producing platforms and apps that can speak with every other to generate a network of main care physicians and specialists from across geography. This will comfort patients to take consultation from specialists or seek a second opinion as require arises.
Technology is one answer to make healthcare superior, nonetheless one of the greatest challenges is the interoperability of all these platforms applying business requirements. While standalone platforms can tick every of the elements discussed above independently, we require to make them converse with every other collectively. And that is a substantial innovation that technologies has in its offing. One of the apparent answers to this is cloud computing, enabling patients to have access to all their details no matter which healthcare organization, doctor, or geographical place they are at. This will not only enhance the high quality and access to care, but also lessen the expense of care considerably. Lessening the burden of administration, repetitive tasks on physicians, and providing superior insights to physicians, as a result lowering doctor burnout. Healthcare organizations, modest and major, require to look at deep technologies integration to drive population wellness outcomes with wealthy information, analytics, and innovation.
(The author is Chief Operations Officer, IKS Health. Views expressed are private and do not reflect the official position or policy of the TheSpuzz Online.)