In today’s fast-paced healthcare industry, your business needs to embrace new technologies in order to stay competitive. Covid-19 brought us the digital transformation the world was expecting for a while, and now the healthcare sector is one of the most saturated fields when it comes to innovative solutions. Last year we saw how easily existing healthcare systems could be overwhelmed. We also learned current weak spots such as poor coordination of hospital management systems, low privacy-preserving measures of medical data collection or efficient tracking of vaccine distribution.
To successfully fill those systematic gaps, healthcare providers need to rely on the right partners to help them utilise the power of technology. Working in a bespoke software development company, I learned that strategic partnerships are valuable assets, especially during uncertain times. While the world will eventually recover and return to a new normal state, it will be up to future-oriented companies that create meaningful solutions for a better tomorrow. Now, let’s take a look which are the top five healthcare software development trends in 2021.
Reliable Medical Communication Tools are Demanded
The challenges that the pandemic posed us with made the need for smooth, innovative and most importantly, reliable healthcare platforms skyrocket. For example, lots of medical providers added telemedical services as a way to answer the high patient demands and adequately consult worried people in quarantine. Especially vital are communication platforms that combine features such as chat, protected data sharing and analysis that can enhance the diagnostic and overall treatment process.
The surge for telemedical products and platforms that integrate multifaceted functionalities is felt throughout the whole industry, and secure information exchange platforms are in high demand. We at Dreamix collaborated with Pryv, leading data privacy experts, to create a modular white-label communication tool that takes care of patients’ sensitive medical data according to the highest industry standards. The solution is developed using a privacy-by-design approach to ensure that personal data is protected throughout the entire engineering process. With its embedded consent management and following strict privacy regulations such as Swiss DPA, HIPAA, GDPR and ePrivacy, the tool aims to ease telemedicine development and help healthcare providers concentrate on their core business.
The Potential of Telemedicine Continues to Rise
While telemedicine is still a work in progress, its broad service palette has shown that telemedical potential is yet to fully unfold. Both European and North American citizens value telemedical services and consider them to be important healthcare delivery instrument. Above all, video consultations are seen as a helpful tool. Still, patients opt for reliable online platforms that consider both their health as well as their sensitive medical data as priorities. A quick look inside the global telemedicine guide allows you to see that many countries adopt different strategies towards regulating and implementing such services as additional routine options for healthcare delivery.
For example, France differentiates between the terms “telemedicine” and “telecare” – they understand the first one as a variant of medical healthcare delivery. At the same time, the latter means connecting patients with pharmacists and auxiliary medical staff (nurses, speech therapists etc.). In the Netherlands, the government takes numerous initiatives and provides telemedical services such as lifestyle monitoring, geo-tracking for mentally ill patients, social robotics etc. Moreover, the ranges of insurance coverage and reimbursements vary across countries. For instance, the US federal Medicare Program restricts telemedical scope significantly, while the UK began to accept remote healthcare services during Covid- 19.
Big Data Revolutionises Healthcare
Hardly anyone can deny just how necessary big data is regarding medical development. We rely on wearable devices, tracking apps or home sensors for self-monitoring at home. But have you wondered just how much data is produced every day? A recent study on big data shows that every day more than 2,5 quintillion bytes of data is created on a daily basis. Massive virtual clouds store most of the newly obtained information, which requires specialised staff to manage these virtual storages and maintain the whole system.
Generally, to extract valuable information using Big Data, companies rely on data analysts who perform complex types of data analysis. One of the most crucial ones in digital healthcare is the exploratory analysis (EDA) which helps you make connections between existing data and new input. Predictive analytics is another powerful tool to make accurate predictions about treatment outcomes, recovery scenarios and deliver prompt recommendations. The causal analytics brings us one step closer to finding answers to the many unknowns in the medical field and save human lives.
Initiatives to Use EHRs as Diagnostic Tools
According to the WHO, the use of electronic health records, or EHRs, is increasing rapidly across the world, with a peak during the past five years. Currently, more than 50% of the upper-middle and high-income countries have EHR in exploitation on a national level. As more and more nations embrace EHR systems for conveniently storing patient’s medical history and monitoring their health status, the question that arises is whether EHRs can serve medical professionals even better than now?
One way to maximise the value of EHR and use them for more than doctor-patient interaction tools is to invest in integrating software solutions designed to focus on diagnostics. With the current state of cutting-edge technologies such as AI, IoT or blockchain, EHRs can be further enhanced and transformed into additional diagnostic instruments that help physicians easily detect early signs of slowly developing conditions and recommend more advanced diagnostic procedures.
Patient Engagement as a Top-Priority
However elaborated products and services the healthcare sector may provide, these can’t be efficient enough without high levels of patient engagement. Essentially, when patients are engaged, they are not just passive recipients of healthcare services. Instead, current efforts lean towards turning patients into cooperative individuals who are involved in the decision-making process. In other words, this is the essential link between patients, their doctors and their personal treatment plan.
Luckily, new technologies have lots of capabilities to increase patient’s engagement and thus improve their health. A standard strategy to activate patients is to educate them and made them leading actors in their personal medical story by presenting medical information in an engaging way. The future of healthcare software development and healthcare management revolves around creating robust solutions that are patient-centric and intuitive to use. Mobile medical apps, wearables and IoT devices can all assist in delivering key information that is easy to digest.
Isn’t it exciting to imagine the enormous potential of tech solutions for healthcare turn into reality in our lifetime?
Biography Aleksandrina Vasileva
Aleksandrina is a Content Creator at Dreamix, a custom software development company, and is keen on innovative technological solutions with a positive impact on our world. Her teaching background, mixed with interests in psychology, drives her to share knowledge. She is an avid reader and enthusiastic blogger, always looking for the next inspiration.
This article has been sponsored by Dreamix
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