The healthcare scenario is changing rapidly than ever before.  Researchers and analysts predict that in the coming years, there will be a huge gap in the number of health care professionals available as compared to the number of aged and sick population that will need attention. Relying only on hospitals for help will no longer be a viable option, as the number of physicians and nurses will fall short for the demand created by this ever-growing population that requires medical attention.

So, what are the alternative solutions to meet this increasing demand?  Owing to the digital revolution happening at such a rapid pace today, technology does offer some simple solutions, which hospitals can adopt to reduce the pressure on their staff as well as make life easier for their patients.

This blog elaborates five simple technologies that promise to have long-term benefits in terms of health and care in the future.

Electronic Health Records

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are easy to adopt and allows hospitals and physicians to easily access medical history, diagnosis, lab data, and patient demographics on demand. It allows for different departments to collaborate with one another thus speeding up the treatment process. Patients can view their own records and be better informed about the healthcare decisions which are being taken for them.  No wonder it is forecasted that the EMR market in will be $36.6 billion by 2021.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had the biggest impact on healthcare than on any other industry as it goes a long way in adding quality to human lives. Healthcare personal assistants embedded with AI are used to provide medication alerts and clinical support. So, patients would eventually speak with a healthcare bot before actually speaking with someone from a hospital.

AI finds its usefulness in detecting abnormalities in X-rays and MRI scans, in processing complex operations in genomics, and in providing assistance to highly customized treatments for patients.

AI helps improve the clinicians’ ability to take appropriate decisions and plan their patients’ treatment in an organized manner. For example, IBM Watson can be used for the democratization of healthcare knowledge. Doctors do not need to spend long hours in trying to investigate a rare disease. Instead, they can rely on Watson to do the search for them. Watson can quickly research through various publications and information published in articles to come up the correct information that the doctors need.

Watson for Oncology is helping doctors plan effective treatments for cancer patients by analyzing the meaning of both structured and unstructured data in clinical notes and reports that may be critical to selecting a treatment pathway.

Big data and Machine learning

Big data is very useful in mining medical data and in improving clinical workflows. It helps to take streaming inputs from multiple sources, such as laboratory tests, consultation notes, and scans and derive timely alerts to doctors and nurses. A very good example of such a system is DeepMind from Google, which takes in data from multiple sensors to train up its algorithms for healthcare-related work.

Machine learning uses web applications to assess patients’ answers to a series of pre-screening questions and gather information about their health. This data helps doctors to spend less time screening their patients and quicken the treatment.

Genomics

Genomics helps identify mutations and links to disease by studying patterns in huge and complex data sets of genetic information and medical records. With advancement in computational technologies, these new generation applications can predict the alterations that occur in the DNA of a cell due to genetic variations, which could be natural or therapeutic.

Genome sequencing coupled with detailed body checkup reports can help detect early stage cancers or cardiovascular diseases.

3D Printing

3D printing finds numerous uses in medicine, such as creating custom-made prosthetics, implants, and patient-specific anatomical models, bioprinting of tissues and organs, and in the pharmaceutical industry to create unique drug dosages. 3D printing helps reduce the cost of treatment, offers customized medical products, and improves productivity.

These simple but futuristic technologies present new opportunities that could transform the healthcare systems, offering new ways to prevent, predict, detect, and treat illness. As patients seek good-quality and affordable healthcare, and providers look to deliver it, these trends will result in a healthier community.