Digital healthcare
T
By Dr. Deepti Saini
he population curve is
swinging upwards and it
highlights the urgency
for easy and affordable
healthcare for all. Age and disease
demographics are changing rapidly
with increasing number of senior
citizens and the rise in chronic disease
incidence rates. When everything
from a new car to table tennis balls
to designer dresses is available
online, why shouldn’t healthcare? A
rhetorical question, but one that if
answered, would obviously show us
that the digitalization of healthcare
needs to be prioritized for us to push
the growth of the medical industry
as well as the quality of health and
healthcare of our nation as a whole.
The telemedicine boom has already
taken off with remote monitors,
wearable devices and data processors
to augment the conventionally
practisced basic medicine. These data
processors allow a variety of different
applications from the data collected
to be efficiently examined, such as
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Volume 4 | Issue 1 | January-March 2019
patient medical records, surveys,
statistics and complaint registers
etc. This may tangentially cause the
discovery of more efficient methods
of accurate diagnosis and improve the
planning and allocation of medical
resources for the patient and change
our definition of primary care. Setting
up appointments and accessing
patient records no longer has to be
a hassle.
WHAT IS DIGITAL HEALTH?
Put simply, the digitalisation of
healthcare means the integration
of technology and robotics into the
healthcare field. This is a platform
for industrial growth as well as
a revolution in the way we treat
healthcare.
TRACKING HEALTH
Patient friendly diagnostic and
tracking devices allow patients to
monitor their health parameters, like
blood sugar levels, blood pressure,
etc., much more efficiently. This
enables them to be more in-charge of
their own well-being. This is not to say
that the technology is a replacement of
the doctor, but rather an assistant for
better medical decisions. The balance
between doctor and patient can be
less one-sided with the assistance of
even their simplistic smartphone.
Doctors will no longer have to utilize