Connections that Could Transform the Future of Healthcare
ful proactive engagement with patients, empowered by mobile devices and an extended care team including family and friends. A collaboration between technology, medicine and individuals.
isolation, clinicians can customise more effective treatment plans because they draw insights from a multitude of sources. They can ‘know’ their patients with an unrivalled depth of understanding.
Diagnoses can be made faster and more accurately to inform a personalised care decision, while treatment can be undertaken without the need for long queues or travel to and from hospital. By using secure cloud-based technology, we can store and analyse incredibly detailed amounts of big data made possible by the IoT and new technologies like digital pathology and genome sequencing. With the right information technology we can scale real-time monitoring capabilities to have one nurse looking at hundreds of different people at different locations at the same time.
Currently, healthcare providers have trouble accessing and utilising this information in an efficient way. Those who work in public health know there is a huge amount of waste – more than $750 billion annually in the US alone. But by individualising healthcare in this way, and empowering providers with the technological tools to store and access information from multiple sources, we can move from a system which treats chronic disease to one which personalises care. It means you can keep people well, not just encounter them when they are in more urgent need of attention, like an acute event.
Data is, of course, a crucial element of this particular healthcare revolution, seamlessly connecting healthcare professionals and patients. Not just electronic medical records, but health data garnered across the health continuum - from healthy living, prevention and diagnosis, to recovery, treatment and homecare - such as information on vital signs and physical wellbeing. This can be done through wearable technology, apps connected to home ware or devices that a patient is using within the hospital, as well as material from imaging systems and data monitors. We’re increasingly seeing examples of connectivity transforming how healthcare is delivered and coordinated. The amount of personal health data generated and tracked is exploding.
These are the liberating promises of the digital age in which we live, where complex algorithms attuned to patients’ vital signs can identify a serious situation and send an ambulance in time. Where elderly parents can still live at home together and go out safely knowing that if they fell, wherever they were, someone will be alerted to come and help immediately.
The potential is to create a world where patients and caregivers stay connected to each other, not just in the hospital. Instead of taking pieces of big data in
Let’s take heart conditions as an example. A more holistic, digital approach can mean that instead of treating the patient after a problem has occurred, tablet-enabled measurements can ensure patients take their medicine on time, help ensure calorie and alcohol intake is measured efficiently and weight is normalised. Monitors in the kitchen can provide nutritional advice, wearable technology can check the heart and record sensitive data, and video installations can link to doctors for instant checkups. All of this is designed to prevent
acute problems, give people the information they need to look after their own health and get an early warning so that medical professionals can better care for their patients and choose the optimum moment for intervention. Crossing fingers in the hope that budgets and system efficacy will improve is not an option. The system as it stands offers patients’ limited opportunities for self-management and resources are stretched evermore thinly. Healthcare systems need to be more patient-centric and a fear of radical realignment should be replaced by an enthusiasm for it. It needs leadership from the top and a new sense of collaboration. These kinds of changes can’t be made in isolation; they require strong, multi-skilled, dynamic partnerships to make a true transition into a digitally-enabled healthier world. One where sophisticated analytic solutions and advanced information technology strengthen society by offering personalised healthcare plans designed to keep people out of hospital. About the author Jeroen Tas has over 30 years of global experience as an entrepreneur and senior executive in the financial services, healthcare and information technology industries. Currently he is the CEO of the Philips Healthcare Informatics Solutions and Services Business Group. Previously he was the Group Chief Information Officer of Royal Philips, leading IT worldwide. n
The Journal of mHealth
23