The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare dynamics and the way
we approach health services, which has brought smart healthcare to the fore.
With adoption of smart technology increasing dramatically over the past few
years, smart healthcare enables improved quality, efficiency, access and
patient experience of care delivery. As the world is moving toward
digitalization and sustainability,
governments globally even take the lead in transforming healthcare landscape
with smart technology.
Smart Healthcare is Taking the
Stage
So what is smart healthcare exactly? Smart healthcare refers to
embedding digital technology and data analytics into the healthcare system,
allowing more accessible, connected and optimized healthcare services with
data-driven insights. Wearables using IoT and sensors to track health data,
telehealth platforms using remote devices to offer contactless patient
monitoring, and smart electronic health record (EHR) using cloud and AI to
provide patient-centric care, to name a few, are all innovative practices of
smart healthcare. Studies have shown that the smart healthcare market
is projected to experience remarkable growth of USD 460 billion in the next
five years. Healthcare will surely continue to evolve, but what’s next for
smart healthcare?
How Healthcare can Learn from
Other Industries’ Transformation
Just like the financial sector is embracing a connected financial
services ecosystem to enable mutually beneficial partnerships, building a
strong smart healthcare ecosystem is the future for the healthcare industry to
improve the patient journey. Players such as medical institutions, pharma
companies, insurers and more constitute an ecosystem to ensure more
patient-centric and sustainable healthcare experiences. Healthcare can take a
page from the emergence of Open Banking; banks collaborate with third-party
service providers to innovate services for customers, and this requires the
sharing of data. The smart healthcare ecosystem is also data-driven; with data
shared through electronic medical records, upstream and downstream healthcare
providers are able to provide seamless and personalized patient care. The data
can not only provide insights for clinical analytics and wellbeing tracking,
but also be shared with insurers to determine insurance coverage. What's more,
patients are expecting easier access to manage their medical history for
health-related decisions and health insurance.
The Key to Connecting and
Building a Smart Healthcare Ecosystem
As connectivity is the key to a holistic smart healthcare ecosystem,
APIs are the enablers of data communication and exchange between fragmented
healthcare systems to maximize the value of data. With secure transmission of
information across different systems through APIs, a patient’s medical data can
be transferred to different healthcare service providers or stakeholders as
well as be integrated with various applications to extend EHR’s core
functionality for more diversified health services. To bridge the gap between
legacy and new health systems and modernize the data exchange, API management
with robust security is imperative, as health records consist of sensitive
patient information. In addition, regulatory compliance should also be taken
into account. This is where a reliable middle platform featuring comprehensive
API management, authentication and security comes into play. 86% of healthcare
organizations have suffered from ransomware attacks in 2022, according to a
recent cybersecurity report. With the growing use of EHR, data breach
mitigation should be healthcare providers’ top priority. A sound middle
platform can restrict access to private health data to authorized healthcare
providers only and ensure HIPAA-compliant data protection.
Technologies are shaping the future of smart healthcare, with a focus
on data sharing to foster innovation and unleash the potential of data, as data
is the key driver of building connectivity of the ecosystem. With the help of
smart healthcare ecosystems, patients can enjoy enhanced medical care, and
healthcare providers can benefit from the capabilities of the ecosystem and
offer more efficient services. There’s still a long road ahead of building a
connected smart healthcare ecosystem, but we can expect more possibilities and
better patient experiences are yet to come.
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