The increasing use of digital technologies within hospitals is bringing about significant changes to healthcare. How can the industry ensure that these new technologies work to both physicians’ and patients’ best advantage, and what risks should be considered before implementing such initiatives?
The digital revolution of healthcare has already begun. IT within the healthcare industry is now not only being used to enhance patient experience and treatment, but to also provide staff with the services they need to reduce redundant tasks.
Having access to patient records at the bedside via a tablet or mobile device can significantly reduce the time that physicians spend circulating the hospital to collect diagnosis information or test results before being able to have a discussion with a patient. Initiatives such as BYOD have already been implemented throughout a number of establishments, but with this increased mobility and access to information comes a whole host of risks that must be considered before installation, namely hygiene and security.
“Disinfection will always be a fundamental issue in healthcare, and adopting robust cleaning processes for mobile devices such as tablets to reduce cross contamination is vital to the control of infection in this environment,” says Wayne Miller, Director, EMEA Healthcare Practice, Zebra Technologies. “When it comes to BYOD in hospitals, infection and contamination is another potential consideration, alongside the obvious security threat for devices beyond the control of the hospital’s IT department. This means that BYOD should be limited.” Miller adds that security management also means restricting access to systems for certain devices that do not meet the hospital’s security criteria.
“Ensuring that patient data is secure and is treated in compliance with local laws are core concerns of each endeavour,” says Laurent Marini, Managing Director, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain, Orange Business Services. “Accessing patient data from anywhere within the hospital needs to be backed up with high levels of data security, robust authentication protocols and extremely secure networks.”
Digital hospitals
In order to take full advantage of the extensive benefits that technology can provide for a healthcare establishment, hospital CIOs should be looking to implement a range of different systems to meet their specific needs. According to Miller, estate-wide tracking technologies will be the future. “RFID and RTLS both offer solutions to meet this challenge, but hospitals must always take into consideration the wireless system needs and the availability of suitable bandwidth before adding such services,” he says. Marini agrees, and believes that leveraging Wi-Fi networks with RFID tags for asset tracking and management of medical equipment, or alert systems with geolocation for surveillance have become “standard services for newly minted digital hospitals.”
Adopting a cloud-based system is also of imperative importance, according to Mohammad Samer Siouty, CEO, NVSSoft. “As patients become more aware of their health and well-being, engaging patients in their own regimen is becoming crucial, as opposed to keeping information behind closed doors, or only discussing during scheduled appointments,” he says. “Giving patients real-time access to their health records and enabling them to submit data about their activities and vital stats is not possible without an EHR system that is cloud-based.”
Wearable technology
Healthcare is a prime target for wearable technology, with a huge boom in business for wellbeing devices such as the Fitbit, which measures physical activity and sets motivational targets for users. “The ‘quantified self’ has gained increasing mass market appeal through the availability of personal, connected devices that can track human physical activity, resulting in new behaviours and attitudes around exercise and well-being,” says Marini. “This represents a promising future for a truly preventive approach to healthcare, considered a key solution to rising public health issues such as obesity and diabetes.”
Wearables can also be used to reduce the need for face-to-face appointments for patients who have undergone serious operations, such as a heart bypass. Follow-up appointments for this type of surgery are usually required, but with the introduction of wearable technology, physicians can now monitor the condition of patients who are recovering in the comfort of their own home.
“Connected devices continually collect patient data and enable physicians to monitor their patients’ conditions on a daily basis,” says Marini. “Intelligent algorithms screen data and are able to detect anomalies representing the onset of potentially life threatening situations, alerting physicians who can organise adequate care response.”
Technological treatments
The use of technology in terms of treating illnesses – particularly mental illnesses – is still under scrutiny, and continues to be a developing factor in this healthcare revolution.
A recent study by the Medical Research Council at the University of Oxford has tested the effectiveness of using virtual reality (VR) technology to combat schizophrenia. Patients were encouraged to drop their defences and try to fully learn that they were safe, by approaching the computer characters shown in the VR, and holding long stares or standing toe-to-toe with the avatars. The patients who fully lowered their defences showed very substantial reductions in their paranoid delusions, with over 50 percent of the group no longer having severe paranoia at the end of the testing day. This positive response has planted the seed for VR technology to be used to treat a variety of anxiety issues, including post-traumatic stress.
But a question that is often asked is whether healthcare professionals are sufficiently trained in IT to realise the full potential that VR, cloud, mobility and analytics can have on enhancing experiences for both patients and physicians alike.
“The simple answer to this question is ‘no’,” says Miller. “There are healthcare professionals who have taken the initiative to develop their IT skills, but these people often have a background or a keen interest in technology. Once clinicians see the real-world applications and benefits that improve efficiency, safety and patient outcomes, this will drive the adoption of IT and with it, more training.” Baher Ezzat, Regional Director, Middle East, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, believes more responsibility lies with the vendor. “In order for them [healthcare professionals] to have the appropriate IT skills, local vendors will need to play a more active role in educating the health workforce and keeping them up to date on the latest innovations in these emerging technologies.”
This ever-increasing involvement of such technologies in healthcare also begs the question of whether data scientists will eventually become a necessity in hospitals.
“It is less a case of whether data scientists will be a necessity and more a case of being essential to the overall healthcare delivery value chain of the future,” says Marini. “Hospitals have choices to make in terms of which kinds of skills they keep in-house, and those that they outsource.”
