In April 2021, a woman in Michigan, USA, had just climbed a flight of stairs and was surprised to find her heart rate at 162. This was indicated by the Apple Watch on his wrist. Not sure how to translate the data, she called her husband at work to share her findings. He immediately advised her to go to the hospital for examination. Luckily for her, she did just that and found that her abnormal heartbeat was a harbinger of a heart attack. Doctors intervened in time to stabilize her, removing her from the reach of harm.
Global research in 2021 showed that 85% of respondents were comfortable taking care of their health if they had the right information and technical application available. This is a really interesting scenario and the power of data and technology has not been combined to create a strong patient and consumer. Today, not only do we have access to health information from trusted sources, but we also have the necessary tools and applications available in our smart phones and connected devices.
The current Covid 19 epidemic has further accelerated the growth of digital adoption in healthcare by focusing on the patient experience on a permanent basis. If the government provides an up-to-date information on the status of the first epidemic such as the Health Bridge application and the steps that need to be taken to prevent it, such as the application COWIN Completed with a digital certificate delivered directly to the patient’s phone and email ID, helped manage one of the largest vaccination rollouts in the country.
Many private healthcare organizations have begun to work on similar principles. Apollo Hospitals, for example, had a telemedicine platform and health application even before the epidemic and was in the right place and position to take advantage of it not only to improve the patient experience but also to enhance interactions with patients during treatment. Cloud Nine Hospitals has fixed more than 90% of their appointments through mobile applications and continues to develop its own telemedicine platform for consultation.
On the consumer side, organizations like CureFit have a huge amount of data about their users. From workout schedules to key indicators such as body mass index, nutritional and dietary food delivery created by users and the online consultation they provide on their platform. This is one of the first instances where we see aggregation of data for users’ health parameters. Therefore, we are seeing a change in the paradigm where the user’s digital data is available for use by all. I recently worked with healthcare startup Fimble Fits to analyze my sleep patterns and see how it affects my health. The pilot is still going on but already some preliminary results are very interesting.
What we understand for the future of healthcare India That is, there is a combination of 3 main components
- Expertise- Provided by hospitals, medical devices, pharma, doctors, nurses, nutritionists, fitness instructors etc.
- Technology – Cloud, Mobile, API, Machine learning And AI among others
- Data – Structured data in the form of EMR / HIS records, unstructured data from fitness apps and data from elements such as weather that affect health
All three will give birth to an experience that will help most ordinary users in India take care of their health. This will not only reduce the burden on our healthcare infrastructure but also the costs currently incurred by the patient and the patient party.
Another aspect that needs to be considered is patient travel mapping, an exercise that healthcare professionals from hospitals and other healthcare organizations can use to better understand what individuals experience throughout a patient’s journey. The patient’s travel map, which outlines all of the patient’s touch points during each stage of the care journey, helps create strategic outreach that improves both the patient’s engagement and satisfaction.
The final part of this future state is health ID. Below Ayushman Bharat Health Mission, Is proposing to have a unique health ID per citizen that will help us create longitudinal data for the user. This will create a common infrastructure that can help all users collect their data and share it with hospitals and doctors in an inter-managed manner as needed.
In conclusion, we have come a long way and innovation in patient-centric healthcare has led to a sea change in the healthcare industry. My view is that there will be a massive change as we move forward on this path and we are seeing the beginning of the most exciting time in healthcare in India where the patient is at the center of this change.
Vikram Venkateswaran, Member – Healthcare Working Group, IET Future Tech Panel
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