How Technology Is Creating A Vision For The Future
Dr. Anita Gupta is an Anesthesiologist, Board Member, C-Suite Healthcare Executive Leader
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As a physician taking care of patients on the frontline, some of the critical tools that I've found to be transformative are digital technology. Whether it be smartphones, telemedicine, data analytics or simply having the ability to speak to family members during quarantined moments, digital technology has taken the patient experience to an entirely new level.
However, there are significant challenges that lie ahead. One of many is how regulators will create pathways to improve the human-to-human connection and what the vision of future digital innovation will look like. Digital transformation has powered the pandemic and helped improve the patient experience, but the keys to accelerating digital transformation in the future are trust, focusing on the patient experience and ensuring everything is done safely, efficiently and securely.
To foster successful digital transformation in health and advance future innovation, I believe leaders need to create successful strategic initiatives in regulation. One example of this is the FDA's recent launch of the Digital Health Center of Excellence, which I consider an essential step in furthering the regulatory framework for digital health technology. This center will hopefully create not only a path for regulation but also for best practices and how to create new, transformative digital interfaces for future patients and healthcare systems.
The pandemic has also revealed to me the importance of digital health in relation to data collection, artificial intelligence, machine learning, telehealth and virtual clinical trials. As a physician, I believe patient outcomes could significantly improve if we start basing our decisions on combining these resources with clinical evidence and professional skill. This was seen recently in research that looked at how AI can predict the use of opioids post-surgery, which has the potential to impact a major global crisis. However, we need to gain plenty of evidence before relying on new technology, as well as address how we can ensure all populations around the globe have equal access to new developments.
From my perspective, there are five types of technology, when combined with the patient experience, that can positively impact the future of digital health:
1. AI Tools: I've also seen how AI and machine learning can make a difference in helping patients during the pandemic. According to the Harvard Business Review, several businesses and health systems have used AI and machine learning to combat Covid-19. Accenture also reported that "these technologies proved essential in supporting Covid-19 triage efforts."
Furthermore, AI can enable data scientists to rapidly analyze large sets of information, especially during a global crisis. This technology can help screen patients, read scans and much more. This shows me that this technology can provide many future opportunities to connect data and significantly improve health, especially during a global crisis.
However, there is much more work ahead in ensuring we can create value with AI for patients long-term, especially in complex patients. From my perspective, having new data models could potentially create future opportunities for growth.
2. Digital Data: A crisis requires coordinated action, rapid movement and data that enables cross-collaboration across many industries and countries. With that, compassionate care continues to be a necessary measure, as I wrote in an article for National Academy of Medicine. The human-to-human connection must be emphasized as we continue to digitize healthcare and rely on digital data. To me, the true art of medicine will continue to be a necessary part of the holistic patient experience.
To ensure end-to-end collaboration, I suggest using digital data analytics and predictive technology in every clinical study and trial. This will allow us to work with data more efficiently while creating a new framework in regulation and innovation.
There are challenges, however, that are important to note, including the potential for unidentified bias. This makes compassion an even greater priority.
3. Virtual Clinical Trials: The FDA released guidance on conducting virtual clinical trials during Covid-19, which I believe poses new opportunities for individuals with chronic illnesses and businesses in drug development. Individuals interested in clinical trials now have the opportunity to participate in virtual clinical trials with digital technology if they were previously limited by physical challenges.
4. Smart Devices: I believe smart devices can give people access to important information and aid in open innovation. We can use social media, for example, to help make patients aware of trials and, with digital technologies, more frequent access to real-world data. Higher engagement can offer more focused experiences, which Covid-19 has revealed to me is critically important to keep individuals connected, track their health, identify any risks, adjust treatments and better manage their health.
5. Electronic Health Records And Telemedicine: I feel it is critical to connect our enterprise electronic medical records with patients and telemedicine. To be efficient with digital transformation and the devices patients are using at home, we must be at the forefront of what that data translates into for an individual's health and, ultimately, their overall health outcomes in the short-term and long-term.
The question will be: How does that data impact health, and will it be possible to interface this data with all the various digital enterprise products? Of course, concerns around cybersecurity and liability with telemedicine remain a regulatory issue that is necessary to deal with head-on in the next few years. Businesses need to create policies and best practices in advance to ensure patient records are HIPPA-compliant.
The next several years will critically depend on future digital health leaders creating best practices and standards, and implementing evidence into clinical care robustly. I believe digital health technologies have the opportunity to improve the future of health, improve outcomes, help individuals navigate the complexities of their health experiences and collect better data for improved efficiencies.
With this, we can hope to advance and accelerate simpler and better health for all, as well as potentially advance equitable access. My vision for the future of digital health transformation is to increase equity and access, improve best practices, standardize patient outcomes models and improve innovation to ultimately treat a broader set of diseases.
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