How technology is reshaping life science and healthcare Industry?
Healthcare should be patient-centric, yet nearly half of surveyed consumers believe that the healthcare industry is more focused on itself, as opposed to patient needs.
One of the great challenges the healthcare industry has faced over the years is handling the widening medical data in order to draw necessary insights while adhering to ever-changing regulatory reforms. Thanks to growing volumes of research, patient-centric approaches from targeted drugs to more convenient diagnostics, to remote care designed around patient needs are now becoming more achievable.
Artificial Intelligence has become the foundational component for absorbing important information from this huge amount of data and providing better patient-centric outcomes, as well as keeping healthcare providers ahead of the digital transformation. Here is how AI is helping the healthcare industry to be more patient-centric.
Along with hurdles such as disintegrated care models and out-of-date technology, healthcare providers now must manage evolving patient expectations.
Healthcare often feels complex and inaccessible. Now, consumers are breaking down these barriers, demanding self-service options that are easy to navigate. For example, 52% are interested in voice assistants for health tips.
With real-time communication now available through chat and social media, consumers expect the same in healthcare. Younger generations, such as Millennials and Gen Z, will continue to drive this expectation, with 63% valuing instant messaging and 42% demanding video chat.
The healthcare industry can step up to provide instantaneous, around-the-clock care by integrating voice AI into its customer service operations.
Physicians require real-time access to clinical data to make fully informed patient care decisions. For example, for a patient who has been diagnosed with heart failure, the doctor should have complete knowledge about the history of heart attacks, blood clots, and other related clinical data.
However, in most cases, doctors are not aware of the patient’s clinical data. AI can act as a single guide that tracks the patient’s data, learns from its experiences, and tailors the best solution for the patient. In addition, AI can help patients to stick to the post-hospitalization recommendations in order to stay healthy.
Telemedicine has made it possible for patients to use telemedical devices to receive home care and support using various applications and video telephony. With this AI-enabled technology, patients can consult with specialists anywhere in the world. The global telemedicine market size was valued at $24.9 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $113.1 billion by 2025. It is quickly becoming an essential part of the healthcare industry.
Telemedicine allows healthcare professionals to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients at a distance using artificial intelligence technology. The approach has been through a striking evolution in the last decade. The expectation for more convenient care, combined with the unavailability of many overburdened medical professionals (especially primary care providers) has made telemedicine an increasingly important part of the American healthcare infrastructure
Healthcare AI is ideally suited to improving coordination of care. It is possible, for example, to train an algorithm that can predict peak hours at an emergency department and support it with admission coordination.
What about software that can flag the most acute cases and prioritize these patients? AI-powered integration of care also offers great opportunities.
Consumers have an increasing number of choices? They have on-demand access to films, TV, music, banking, and mobility. It’s no wonder they expect more choice in healthcare.
Consumers have access to unlimited information (not all of the high quality) to help them understand their own bodies, and they’re using it - 65% of patients seek information about conditions outside of physician visits. AI-enabled apps offer personalized health plans. Home testing kits offer rapid diagnosis, which some see as complementary, or alternative, to a doctor’s diagnosis. Future patients are likely to be more questioning, have higher expectations, but also be more open to new approaches.
Improving patient experience takes deploying technology as well as leveraging data-driven insights. Data is the fuel that powers any organization’s customer-centricity. Data points can include system data, device data, customer information, and inventory data to enable a 360-degree view that expedites customer-centric decision-making and optimization. In that regard, big data and AI technologies support collecting, sorting, managing and leveraging this data to its complete potential.
This ability to mine deeper insights is key to understanding a customer’s health journey and designing standout experiences.
Predictive analytics is another aspect where big data takes on a key role. Optimus Labs, a US Research collaborative, collected data from over 30 million patients to create a database for predictive analytics that aims to improve healthcare systems.
Besides controlling population health, mining data with AI technology helps doctors provide more accurate diagnoses and design more successful treatment plans. Providers can search for specific symptoms that they may not have seen before and get input from thousands of doctors across every related discipline.
Imagine Google, but with search results and records that only come from other qualified professionals. One such platform, Modernizing Medicine, offers a storehouse of information from nearly 3,700 doctors and 14 million patient visits.
Giving providers access to almost limitless data means better treatment outcomes for patients, but giving that same data access to patients helps them avoid treatment altogether. When powering telemedicine devices, healthcare AI can allow patients to search for the same trusted data sources to determine whether their symptoms actually warrant a visit to the doctor.
Patient engagement is vital to patient experiences, which is why AI-driven apps are becoming more popular among patients and providers alike. These apps should have a more consumer-friendly front end that can empower patients to make better decisions and be more proactive in their own healthcare.
AI-enabled cloud-based solutions are a standard in modern software systems. It enables interoperability among stakeholders and works well with remote work locations, unifying all the branches in a healthcare system. Hospitals and professional healthcare providers should consider platforms that allow for easy communication and access to health records in real-time.
The use of artificial intelligence in cloud-based systems and communication platforms can enable fast and secure data collection, integration, and synchronization. Data put together from clinical, financial and operational departments should be used in developing new metrics for quality, patient satisfaction, and healthcare performance. The resulting data can be used to give medical advice and treatment plans to suit individuals based on the metrics.
AI solutions automate and simplify time-consuming, mundane tasks and help healthcare providers and distributors with mining and managing huge amounts of data. Applications using Artificial Intelligence can be used to analyze test reports, CT scans, X-rays and diagnose complex conditions and diseases. Faster detection of diseases and availability of patients’ medical records and history saves time for both the patient as well as the care provider. This makes it possible to diagnose diseases quickly and embark on treatment measures quickly. This essentially makes sure that patientIl ‘s healthcare needs are quickly looked into, their treatment processes are holistic.
The ability to take images of human anatomy has transformed the healthcare industry. Not only can doctors screen patients for cancer, but they can also use imaging technology to make new discoveries about the human brain. But these scans are expensive: AN MRI or fMRI can cost up to $4,000.
It’s no wonder, then, that a lot of focus has been put on developing cheaper AI imaging. For example, Google DeepMind’Je s medical image-assistive AI can identify 50 sight-threatening eye diseases. Other AIs can identify markers of potential strokes, spot lung and liver lesions, and screen children for autism with an iOS app, and there is even an AI that can detect tuberculosis. There are no limits to the power of AI medical imaging, especially when you can use a simple and low-cost app on your phone to do it.
An increasing number of healthcare organizations are adopting AI chat bots to triage patients and guide them to the appropriate help. Generally seen as a more accurate and reliable alternative to patient-driven online searches concerning symptoms, chat bots help patients who might otherwise not work where best to receive care. These chat bots operate by first collecting basic information from patients. Then, based on input, the chat bots can provide patients with more information about their conditions and suggest the next steps.
AI Chat bots are intended to support clinical teams by lightning heavy daily caseloads. Some bots, after analyzing patient data, are able to suggest a discussion with a clinician rather than an in-office visit, routing the patient’s case to a live provider via video call.
The healthcare industry has seen a tremendous amount of changes in such a short time, and we took notice at BayBridgeDigital.
We are using our know-how and expertise in an array of industries to bring a tailored solution to our health professional customers. As the prism in the medical field is shifting from being merely treatment-centric to patient-centric, we are helping our customers reinvent their relationship with their patients by establishing Patient Experience Management, where they will be able to put them at the center of their operations to deliver the best Patient Journey.
