Healthcare Tools of the Future: How will health-tech transform the medical industry after COVID-19?
The current COVID-19 pandemic became a real challenge for healthcare systems all over the world. It showed that the medical industry must undergo massive transformations to ensure quality patient care. A great part of such transformations relies on new technologies and innovative software solutions. Hospitals and clinics already use health-tech to fight a coronavirus disease. So we have all reasons to expect that digital healthcare tools will soon reshape clinical services, making them more efficient, affordable, and accessible.
To prepare your hospital or clinic for the future changes, take a look at the list of medical solutions below. We believe that they will drive the digital transformation of healthcare institutions in the post-COVID-19 era.
Telemedicine software
Coronavirus is extremely contagious and that’s the main reason why it caused the pandemic. The disease may spread through talking, coughing, and sneezing. For example, people can get infected after they had contact with a sick person or touched surfaces with a virus and then touched their eyes or noses. So when a person with COVID-19 symptoms goes to a doctor’s office, he or she puts at risk not only medical staff but also other patients in hospital or clinic.
The wide adoption of telemedicine software may become an effective solution to the problem of contagious viruses like COVID-19. With the help of telecommunication technologies, doctors can assess patients’ symptoms remotely. The information collected during a video call with a patient will help clinicians protect themselves and other people from catching the disease even if the hospitalization of a sick person is unavoidable. Also, remote health monitoring apps allow physicians to track the health conditions of mildly infected people who stay at home.
Chatbots and virtual assistants
After the coronavirus outbreak, the number of patients seeking medical advice drastically increased. Panicked people concerned about their health wanted to visit a doctor or tried to get tested for COVID-19 even if they didn’t have any symptoms. Such people took up valuable hospital resources so patients who really needed medical help were not able to get proper treatment.
Chatbots and virtual assistants can enable pre-hospital triage, helping medical organizations effectively manage a large number of patients even during crisis situations like pandemics. In particular, AI-powered chatbots can analyze health information provided by patients and direct them to the right care settings.
For example, if people don’t need additional care, a medical chatbot will reassure them that everything is alright. It can also provide people with minor symptoms with standard treatment instructions or virtual care options. For high-risk patients, chatbots can automatically book a doctor’s appointment or contact the emergency department.
Disease surveillance and diagnostic AI tools
To stop a pandemic, doctors have to gather and analyze a lot of information. For example, they need to know how a disease is spread, what symptoms it has, how long the incubation period lasts, and what complications can develop later. Since the volume of cases increases exponentially, it’s practically impossible to do an accurate analysis without technological support.
Disease surveillance tools powered by such AI technologies as machine learning, deep learning, data analytics, natural language processing, and speech recognition can help governments and health organizations deal with crises like COVID-19 more effectively. In particular, they are able to process and interpret lab results very fast, giving clinicians an opportunity to curb the spread of infection at the early stage.
At the same time, AI-enabled diagnostic solutions can analyze medical data, including CT images, and diagnose patients quickly and with high accuracy.
Wrapping-up
The COVID-19 pandemic has already triggered major changes in the healthcare industry. But to prevent similar situations from happening in the future, medical organizations must continue improving patient care even after the present crisis is over. We believe that telemedicine software, chatbots, disease surveillance and diagnostic AI tools will soon become mainstream among hospitals and clinics, helping them get better patient outcomes and save lives.
