EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
Disruptive Innovation in India Healthcare: The Time Has Come to Think Differently
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the medical community has been selfless, but also losing a number of staffs in the process.
- It is in such a situation that the relevance of disruptive technology and its applicationscomes into focus in order to reduce the chances of hospital staff contracting the infection.
Why disruptive technology is needed for India’s healthcare?
- Universal Health Coverage (UHC): It is the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer.
- It is a powerful social equalizer and the ultimate expression of fairness.
- Growing popularity of medical tourism: The healthcare is now one of the largest sectors in India both in terms of revenue and employment, and it is booming thanks to increased investment by private players.
- Moving Healthcare from Hospital to Home: The COVID-19 has ramped up technological disruption in the healthcare industry.
- The pandemic accelerated the need for remote patient monitoring and usage of IoMT in ambulatory and home care, which has led to a boom in tele-consultations and monitoring.
- Increased role of secondary and tertiary hospitals: These centers are now able to provide higher levels of care thanks to advancements such as telemedicine.
- The specialists who are employed only by primary hospitals in large urban centers are no longer limited to only serving patients in-person.
- Application of smart devices: It allows both patients and providers to monitor conditions at a previously unprecedented level.
- The apps for consumer devices such as smart watches and fitness bands provide patients with real-time data and allow providers to view information over time.
- Technology and human hand-in-hand for a better healthcare: could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones, equalize the relationship between medical professionals and patients, and provide cheaper, faster and more effective solutions for diseases.
Role of technology in healthcare and society
- Creation of autonomous systemic data: Blockchain technology can help in addressing the interoperability challenges that health information and technology systems face.
- The health blockchain would contain a complete indexed history of all medical data, including formal medical records and health data from mobile applications and wearable sensors.
- Big data analytics: It can help improve patient-based services tremendously such as early disease detection.
- The AI and the Internet of Medical Things, or IoMT (which is defined as a connected infrastructure of medical devices, software applications, and health systems and services) are shaping healthcare applications.
- Medical autonomous systems: It can also improve health delivery to a great extent and their applications are focused on supporting medical care delivery in dispersed and complex environments with the help of futuristic technologies.
- It may also include autonomous critical care system, autonomous intubation, autonomous cricothyrotomy and other autonomous interventional procedures.
- Usage of cloud computing facility: It facilitates collaboration and data exchanges between doctors, departments, and even institutions and medical providers to enable best treatment.
- Level-playing field for all sectors: The big data applications in the health sector should help hospitals provide the best facilities and at less cost, provide a level playing field for all sectors, and foster competition.
- Connectivity among healthcare services: The IoMT offers the connection of smart medical devices and software applications to improve the services offered by hospitals, medical equipment, outsourced expertise, telemedicine, medical tourism, and health insurance.
Challenges ahead adoption of technology for healthcare sector
- Lack of interoperability: The patient identification is not standardized yet and often making it impossible to match a person with their records.
- Nearly anyone can input information into a patient's electronic health records (EHRs), but withdrawing data isn't always possible.
- Keeping Up With Old Tech: The outdated software creates security holes which allow hackers to take down the healthcare systems.
- User-Unfriendly Interfaces: If there is too much data on the screen at once, or the interface does not help users navigate, no one is going to use it.
- Overcomplicated Asset Tracking: The asset tracking through electronic health records can be both a blessing and a curse.
- The medical workers can use it to find anything with a barcode or RFID tracking chip.
- The physicians often complain that poorly designed systems impede their work, making them a slave to their EHRs.
- Serious Digital Risks: The prevailing model of health care delivery is highly complex.
- It comprises layers of processes, a network of patients and partners, insurance reimbursement models, delivery models, and regulatory requirements.
- These complexities when combined with technological advancements expose the industry to severe digital risks.
- Poor Training and Onboarding: The traditional application and technology training in healthcare is not focused on efficiently using the software but rather on the process.
Technological measures to be adopted for India’s healthcare sector
- Innovative field hospitals using robots to care for COVID-19 patients: There are hospitals, in China, that use 5G-powered temperature measurement devices at the entrance to flag patients who have fever/fever like symptoms.
- Achieving UHC through technology: It should be led by a robust strategy integrating human, financial, organisational and technological resources.
- Indigenous digital health strategy: India needs to own its strategy that works and leads towards universal health coverage and person-centred care.
- It should emphasise the ethical appropriateness of digital technologies, cross the digital divide, and ensure inclusion across the economy.
- National response drawn upon local knowledge: Community nurses, doctors, and health workers in developing countries do act as frontline sentinels.
- The primary health centres (PHCs) in India could examine local/traditional knowledge and experience and then use it along with modern technology.
Road ahead
- The initial efforts should involve synchronisation and integration, developing a template for sharing data, and reengineering many of the institutional and structural arrangements in the medical sector.
- With the advent of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and 3-D printing, the healthcare sector worldwide is going through an unprecedented phase of disruption.
- The Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make inventory need predictions much more accurate, and IoMT can connect inventory management between pharmaceutical and healthcare businesses.
- India could have a comprehensive inventory management system that tracks, predicts, and adjusts inventory across the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector when AI and IoMT are fully developed and implemented.
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