Role of technologies in driving the growth of the child healthcare industry

In the present day’s tech-savvy world, the ceaseless high-tech technological advancements witnessed in the domain of healthcare has saved countless lives and has upgraded the quality of life all the more. The ever-mounting Indian healthcare sphere offers a great instance of the industry getting transformed and more reformed by embracing the various novel technological innovations and new-age medical strategies. The child healthcare sector in India is one such field which has currently experienced tremendous growth due to the adoption of unusual and radical technologies and has grown to emerge as one of the largest and speedily evolving sectors in the contemporary times.

Additionally, the new-fangled technologies have not only positively altered experiences for patients and their families but at the same time has also had a tremendous impact on medical procedures and the practices of healthcare specialists. Let’s have a close look at the role played by technologies in benefitting patients and medical professionals alike.

• The Digitalization of Health Records

 The introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in substituting the age-old time-consuming paper records has proved to be a true game-changer for many allied skilled child healthcare experts. Health assistants, medicinal records and health information technicians (MRHITs), medical billing, coding experts and listed nurses are just some of the connected healthcare roles that have been optimistically transformed by this technological implementation. Nurses and technicians are now accountable for recording patient data such as significant signs, weight, and the result of tests, to name a few into a central, digitized system. Making use of EHRs has made the administrative work like arranging for appointments, updating patient records with analytic codes and submitting medical claims, quite effortless. EHRs is also known to offer precious data to clinical researchers, which will further improve medical know-how and the growth of new treatments for common health maladies.

• Wireless communication

While walkie-talkies and instant messaging are not considered to be new technologies themselves, but these have recently been introduced to the sector of child healthcare in India. These have almost helped to replace traditional devices like beepers and overhead pagers. The 21st-century hospitals are fast catching pace with the staff interacting with one another through the use of wireless communication. Furthermore, the modern-day advanced messaging systems offer innovative platforms for users and operators to send secure messages like lab tests and alerts to one another by making use of web-based consoles, smartphones or third-party clinical systems. These messaging systems can accelerate and further advance the smooth process of communication while logging, tracking, sending and receiving information in a protected manner.

• Real-time locating facilities

Another mounting information monitoring tool, real-time tracing services, are aiding hospitals and medical facilities to pay emphasis on competence and promptly recognize problematic areas. Hospitals have now started to implement tracking systems for tools, devices and even clinical staff. These effortless services manage to gather data on zones and departments that formerly were hard to track. Surveying analysis can only go so far, chiefly in areas continually altering like emergency departments, but tracing movement with a real-time locating service can help to highlight possible issues in efficacy and utilization. These tools also allow elasticity for any last-minute modifications.

• Big data and the cloud

 Big Data’ is literally the buzzword of the modern-day digital age. The term implies to the huge amounts of data composed from a multitude of sources that are then administered and utilized for analytics. As an industry that deals with the public, child healthcare sector certainly is required to gather and stock an enormous amount of data and information. When examined by data specialists, this information has diverse advantages like condensing healthcare charges, forecasting epidemics, evading avoidable and unnecessary deaths, refining quality of life, plummeting healthcare wastage, improving effectiveness and quality of care provided to patients and also in developing new drugs and medical treatments. With the major transformation to EHRs, healthcare facilities need to have expandable, economical and safe storage solutions. This is exactly where The Cloud computing steps in. This is possibly one of the most state-of-the-art products introduced in child healthcare technology today. The Cloud makes use of hardware and software to provide services via the medium of the internet. In this case, healthcare experts and patients are able to access certain files, records, information and data, and utilize applications from any internet-enabled device.

• Portal technology

Patients are today progressively becoming active players in handling their own healthcare, and portal technology is one such dynamic tool aiding them in doing so. Portal technology lets doctors and patients access medical records and network virtually. This type of technology has allowed patients to become more actively involved, accountable and better educated about taking charge of their own health. In addition to the growing access and obtainability of medical material, portal technology can definitely be a source of empowerment and responsibility for patients. It is an authoritative medium owing to the fact that a patient can be an extraordinary helper in their own care, thus making them an active contributor.

  Tele-medicine/telehealth

The telehealth offers great advantages to particularly rural settings that fail to have access to the resources and facilities that metropolitan areas may have. While telemedicine is not essentially a novel innovation in technology, it is certainly a mounting field, and its scope of prospect is nothing but expanding.  The cost profits offered by telehealth can't be ignored either, claims are automatically generated, but the fees are abridged to factor out age-old office costs. Setting aside the tangible healthcare costs, these telemedicine hospitals will also lessen time out of office values for employees and employers by removing the necessity to leave work to go to a primary care office.

On a concluding note, the impact of technology on the overall child healthcare sector is positive and this revolution nothing but promises to empower patients to take better control of their own health, and to let providers offer more unified, integrated and personalized care for patients.

This article is contributed by Dr. Atish Laddad, Founder & Director, Docterz.