Top 3 Trends in IT That Will Change Healthcare in 2021
Top 3 Trends in IT that will Change Healthcare in 2021
Nowadays technology is one of the most vastly improving sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic has played a key role in boosting this process even further and accelerating the adoption of innovative IT methods to the standard medical ones. The past months have been marked with impressive medical achievements like leveraging wearables and potential X-ray scans in early COVID-19 detection, using AI in identifying coronavirus treatments, a COVID vaccine invented for only 10 months, etc. Scientists predict this is only the start as the IT sector is gaining speed as never before. It is predicted that technology will transform the healthcare industry entirely. Here are the top 3 trends that will be the big breakthrough in the upcoming year.
The era of machine learning and artificial intelligence
The development of machine learning and AI tools will continue to help clinical staff diagnose patients more quickly. AI plays a key role in medicine and has the capability to identify sequences and trends in data that humans cannot.
AI and machine learning can be trained to follow the same patterns doctors do when making a diagnosis. There is one obstacle on the way of AI/ML becoming the ultimate tool for disease diagnosis: it needs a lot of digital examples to learn from. Only a fraction of all data is currently available as electronic health records, even in countries with advanced medical systems. Thus, the full potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare is yet to be realized in 2021.
Telemedicine & remote healthcare will become the new normal
When it comes to patient care, telehealth is invaluable, as it offers contactless medical consultations that take less time than a traditional hospital visit. Instead of the regular visits to their doctor patients will now be able to schedule online appointments or have a developed robotic healthcare worker arrive at their homes. Proven to be very helpful eHealth tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, this technology is also great when it comes to an urgent need for a healthcare specialist, for example, when someone is having a stroke. Meanwhile, doctors get a chance to work with more patients and telehealth is projected to become even better adopted in 2021. Some experts say that this is only the beginning, and soon the scale of telemedicine will increase.
Big Data will get bigger
Patient health data, mostly known as Electronic Health Records (EHR) have existed for a while but now is the time to be used strategically for better patient treatment. Countries around the globe have been working on more comprehensive and accessible electronic health records. In Sweden, for example, all citizens and residents have a personal identification number, known as the Swedish PIN, used for all healthcare documentation. Researchers who have access to these digital health portals can revel in a treasure trove of data.
A popular device worth noting is the smartwatch. Having significantly increased users’ health awareness, this could be the perfect tool for healthcare providers when combined with other collection metrics.
As more and more data is collected by healthcare devices, an efficient system for managing this data and securely sharing it with the right stakeholders is also necessary.
In response, many health APIs have emerged that provide resources and data sharing across healthcare institutions. For instance, an API provides a method to check wellness in a given voice sample for risk mitigation.
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