Healthcare: Preparing for a New Normal

While all industries are struggling to manage the impacts of COVID-19, healthcare faces perhaps greater challenges than most. 

Healthcare of the future needs to ensure access to care…anywhere 

Already in use, telemedicine is good for routine diagnoses. Wearables and remote patient monitoring reduce location dependency and allow physicians to evaluate patients safely with in-office precision.  

Analytics, digital and mobile solutions will support remote care access, and help physicians manage and monitor patients. In our increasingly dispersed delivery ecosystem, wearable devices can provide real-time data for patients who suffer from ailments like high blood pressure or diabetes, potentially allowing physicians, or algorithms, to remotely dispense medications. Emerging technologies like swarm intelligence, might be used internally to laser-target and deliver medications such as chemotherapy directly to tumors.  

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will transform healthcare by using real-time data and analytics to provide insights that can be used for reducing Cost of Care and enhancing Quality of care through early detection, prevention and treatment of disease. Evolutionary AI gives researchers a tool to dynamically model therapies, treatments and disease progression. This approach not only improves prediction accuracy but also informs and enhances decision making by offering a broader range of options. For example, to accelerate diagnosis and triage patient care, technologists and clinicians are training AI-based image recognition systems to identify signs of COVID-19. This includes the use of machine-learning programs that are trained to detect patterns in scanned lung images to understand who needs the most urgent care and access to limited resources. 

5G and the Internet of Things will connect the world in unprecedented ways across millions of devices. For example, emergency response vehicles will be equipped with uninterrupted, secure real-time data transfer and voice-to-video communications so doctors can work with EMTs to quickly stabilize a patient on site. Real-time voice and video streaming will enable surgeons to guide long-distance robotic surgeries, eliminating potentially dangerous communication delays.   

The bottom line…technology will dramatically change everything from the site of care to who delivers care and how. How prepared are we for the new normal?