COVID-19 has helped to move healthcare further into the technological realm. With people preferring to be able to manage their health remotely as much as possible, technology has become instrumental in three different areas:
- Telemedicine
- Outpatient care
- Health monitoring
One of the greatest benefits from this is that it provides a way of integrating more preventive methods into our daily lives. This can make it easier to detect problems, minimize the problems caused by ailments, and lower costs. China is one nation that is putting a large amount of research and money into remote healthcare monitoring, particularly remote consultations to reduce the risk of spreading illness through direct contact. Many nations are also looking into ways to provide remote hospital services. This is possible through remote monitoring, saving both the patient and hospital money since the patient is able to stay home. This also means that more hospital beds will be available when needed.
Developing new wearable technology is part of this push to remote healthcare, with things like the AppleWatch, Kardia heart sensor, and FitBit showing that many vital functions can be monitored remotely. Companies are researching how other vitals can be monitored, such as blood sugar and urine analysis. This kind of tracking will also help medical professionals get a more accurate health history.
In additional to helping allow people to be treated from the comfort of their own home and more information for medical professionals, it also gives researchers a lot more data from which to better understand a wide range of conditions and situations related to healthcare.
If you are interested in learning more about the potential uses of digitalization of healthcare and things that are being done around the world, check out How Coronavirus Is Helping Drive the Digitalization Healthcare.