This blog is written by Nupur U. Shah of Pravin Gandhi College of Law
Introduction
Medicine and Healthcare is a huge sector around the globe and advances in this field have had the medical devices industry flourishing to meet the increasing demand for technologically advanced devices, extensive use of smart medical devices, and improvement of the overall health care sector. Smart medical devices are the most famous in the market at the moment because of their portability, monitoring various parameters of the body, and lightweight. We witness technological transformation taking place every day and healthcare as a sector is taking good advantage of the new technologies being introduced. Digital technology helped transform an unsustainable healthcare system into a sustainable one. Makes doctor-patient communication easy, quick, and cheaper. It also efficiently helps to win over diseases that are difficult in nature leading to healthier individuals living in healthier communities. The future of medicine and healthcare lies in working hand-in-hand with technology.
Having said that technology is a helpful resource, we still do have our fears of artificial intelligence taking over human jobs, the future generation being absolute slaves of it and living in their dream world, genetic tests revealing the day of our death, etc. which all are half-truths and fake news. These all are constructed fashionably and alternative facts are shown to us. As much as scary the future may seem to us at this moment we cannot stop technological development and also cannot deny the fact that it has been a great help to us in all sectors. For a better tomorrow, we humans need to walk hand-in-hand with the technology and at the same time be ahead of it two steps. Technology can result in getting amazing results. As the saying goes changes begin from home, so it is worth starting our future with something better for our own health and to create a healthy community.
Technology Reshaping the Healthcare
This year we have been hit with a major situation concerning our health, the coronavirus. This has had all of us sitting at home the entire year, doing anything and everything from our homes with the help of technology, even calling doctors for knowing what precautions to take or understanding the symptoms. With the different world that this situation has shaped, we have come to a lot closer to our digital devices. Out of crises, a new opportunity arises. It is the year that has seen the rise in telehealth; people have had to wait in virtual queues for their number to come. Since the pandemic hit there has been a rise in a telehealth consultation. It's a new world with new ways as we move forward to 2021.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning (AI and ML) are making a place for themselves in the healthcare sector. With the introduction of digital health care; health care is going to become more data-driven than the other sectors in the coming years which will offer better and more specific patient care. Hospitals are going to become more tech-savvy. According to Harvard Business Review, technology will become more prevalent in hospitals by 90%.[1] Medical AI can work efficiently, can perform expert-level accuracy, and is cost-effective. Still, patients struggle to trust machines over humans when it comes to health and medicines. Regardless of that, AI and ML will make a huge difference in several ways and time will tell. With a New Year approaching, new things are set out to happen; there is a slow shift to accepting digital health and telehealth. We are yet to witness what all can AI do for us in a better way. We are already familiar with wearable devices; most of us have one on our hands each day, multitasking for us.
Such devices have already made so much of a difference; they are the start of the transformation that will save a lot of lives. Duncan Banks a lecturer at the Open University is investing in health trackers made by companies like Samsung UK and he has found out that over 55 of his patients responded well to using such gadgets. Kelly White, General Manager of WWT Asynchrony Labs London says that lives can be saved through virtual visits from doctors that run through portable video devices. He further adds that the kits made by his company come with a two-way camera which helps patients to speak with medical staff and at the same time monitor blood pressure and blood oxygenation as well.[2]
New-age technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are changing the lives of patients and physicians as well. US study shows that VR is the best and well-established treatment for phobias. Future surgeons are being trained to use VR efficiently. The study also shows that VR has helped improve overall performance compared to the traditional methods; this method is faster and more accurate performance-wise. VR technology is helping patients to come out of pain, for example, the VR headsets help women watching soothing landscapes who are in labor pain, giving relief to cancer, neurological pain, and post-surgical pain which have shown a decline in pain levels. AR differs from VR in two ways. AR does not make the viewers lose their touch with reality and it puts information into eyesight as fast as possible. These distinctive features enable AR to become a driving force in the future of medicines; both on the healthcare providers’ and the receivers’ side. AR helps students studying medicine, helping them to perform practical for real-life operations in a better manner without actually needing a body. Also helps the surgeons to enhance their capabilities. Students of Case Western Reserve University are already using AR for their studies.
The scene is changing the hospitals. Bluetooth tags are being installed on scanners and beds which help the hospital to track patients and treatment of the patients. A few hospitals have planned to install real-time trackers to the patients which will help their loved ones track their health progress and provide them with all their reports and x-rays on their phones on apps. These devices also help the doctor get patients' reports from their bedside to on the doctor's phone. The internet of things (IoT) is largely being used in hospitals too and not only by individuals.
Conclusion
We are moving towards a new age where technology will be used extensively and massively in each sector. With the fear of trusting machines and privacy of the data, there was slow progress but people have started to bend towards healthcare technology which is helping them. The concerns regarding data privacy are being taken care of by the brands that are developing such devices for the future, so this aspect might be solved well and people will start trusting more of these devices. The future holds a lot of great opportunities for healthcare tech; time will show how these will shape up. Studies have proven and will prove further also prove that technology is being used at the best for medicine and healthcare.
[1] Chiara Longoni and Carey K. Morewedge, AI Can Outperform Doctors. So Why Don’t Patients Trust It? Harvard Business Review, (Oct.30, 2019), (https://hbr.org/2019/10/ai-can-outperform-doctors-so-why-dont-patients-trust-it) [2] Samsung Knox, Healthcare in the open Economy. (http://tgr.ph/openhealth)
Comments