How Technology is Changing the Way Medical Practices Operate (2015-07-23)

Considering the many ways that technology has quite radically altered our lives in recent years, it should come as no surprise that healthcare is also changing as a result of new developments. The medical jobs that are available today are likely to be quite different to how healthcare operates in the next couple of decades!

Examples of current digital advances in the healthcare space include virtual appointments where patients meet with medical professionals online, apps and devices for conducting health readings, diagnosing illnesses, and monitoring conditions, shared electronic health records, and software programs for medical centre scheduling and patient care planning.

Some healthcare technology examples

This technology is already available in the healthcare sector.

• Telstra Ready Care – a telehealth service that enables patients to find a doctor remotely, and obtain a virtual appointment in a telemedicine centre where they can talk with a GP, upload photo images of their condition, and receive expert care.

• PicSafe App – an app that enables medical professionals to take clinical photos with their patients’ permission, and share them with other medical personnel via a cloud server for feedback.

• PCEHR – the Personally Controlled E-Health Record is an online health record for patients, containing details of healthcare, treatment plans, medications, allergies and other pertinent information.

• ComCare programs – these include ComCare Mobile, which enables instant access to electronic health data such as assessments, service and care details, and clinical information. There’s also ComCare Desktop – scheduling and rostering programs for planning client visits and healthcare.

• Medical sleep testing – for use with patients who have sleep apnoea. This program enables GPs to generate referral forms for their patient to see a sleep specialist. The patient is then provided with a portable device to use while asleep, the results of which are uploaded to a server, analysed by the specialist, and reported back to the GP.

• AirSonea App – for asthmatic patients. This can be used to measure their ‘WheezeRATE’ from 30 seconds of breathing. Breath sounds can then be transmitted to the AirSonea web portal for analysis.

• StethoCloud – a smartphone stethoscope for diagnosing childhood pneumonia.

• DynoSensor – a device that hospital patients can use for self-monitoring when leave the hospital, enabling them to be discharged sooner than they otherwise might and recover in their own homes.

• GENE-Radar – portable device using nanochip technology that can be used to test for AIDS, E.coli, Salmonella, diabetes and even some cancers, from a single drop of the patient’s blood or saliva.

• Wearable devices – for patients to take their own heartrate, blood pressure and other readings.

Benefits for GPs and their patients

These types of technologies could go a long way towards reducing the burden of healthcare delivery and costs. Specific advantages may include:

• Better access to medical care for patients who have difficulty in attending clinics and hospitals, due to disability, living in a remote area, lack of transport or other reasons. In such cases virtual appointments and sensing technology for diagnoses could provide suitable solutions.

• Increased efficiency in medical clinics and hospitals in terms of diagnosis and patient care.

• Reduction of time spent in hospital, enabling patients to recover in their own homes, monitor their own conditions remotely and communicate with the hospital online.

• Greater support of patient self-management in terms of their own health conditions.

• Reduced need for expensive equipment for health tests, leading to a cost reduction for diagnosis.

• Reduction in the time required for disease diagnosis from the use of sensing technology.

The possibilities of sensing technologies

The benefits of these new sensing technologies may include the ability to diagnose serious conditions in a fraction of the time and at a far lower cost than otherwise. As an example, creators of Nanobiosym’s GENE-Radar device – designed for remote African regions – claim that it has the capacity to detect AIDS in under an hour at a cost of $2.

Just as computer technology started out with the massive ENIAC computer and has now been reduced to the size of a device that you hold in the palm of your hand, healthcare of the future looks set to make more and more use of ‘lab on a chip’ technology such as the GENE-Radar. This type of technology may in the future be used by patients to take their own readings and upload the results wirelessly to their doctor or an electronic health record for analysis.

For medical clinics, sensing technologies and virtual appointments have the potential to vastly reduce waiting times and the costs of administering patient care. Faster diagnoses of conditions could also lead to improvements in treatment planning and follow-up care for patients.

The future of healthcare

While these technologies are already available, there are many that are still in the development stages or that are not yet being used on a wide scale. So it’s more important than ever for healthcare professionals to stay on top of new developments, and how they could change healthcare delivery in a variety of settings into the future.

Sources:

http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20150703/what-you-need-to-know-about-telstra-readycare-cw.html

https://picsafe.com/medi

http://eos.blacknova.com.au/Mobile

http://airsonea.com.au/

http://www.medicalsleeptesting.com/

http://singularityhub.com/2012/08/10/stethocloud-the-20-stethoscope-attachment-for-smartphones-to-diagnose-pneumonia/

http://dynosense.com/2014/10/27/the-future-of-medicine-dynosensor/

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/15/nanobiosym-our-portable-device-can-detect-aids-in-under-an-hour/

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