Leading Technological Changes In Healthcare

Review of Literatures

Discuss about the Leading Technological Changes in Healthcare.

The last decade has witnessed some of the path breaking and significant changes in terms of technological innovations and advancements in the medical fields and healthcare facilities. The process is a dynamic one with revolutionizing, life-changing technological interventions intruding our everyday life scenarios. Healthcare industry with its ever-surging patient numbers require multiple demands to be fulfilled successfully. In view of this, the importance of the modern day technology and inventions pertinent to medical domain is receiving a major thrust with the passage of time. Therefore, a glimpse into these futuristic models suitable for implementation will provide an insight into the actual circumstances. The prime challenge faced in this regard is in identification of the potential ideas and developments that can be put into practice in the later days. However, provision of quality as well as cost-effective healthcare services has been a matter of concern for the healthcare professionals and efforts are in progress to ensure these benefits without burdening the recipients with excessive health cost. Thus, constant modification of the existing healthcare settings, replacement of the conventional mode of medical service with personalized and updated advancement in the healthcare sector is the call of the hour to guide us towards a better and healthy tomorrow.

A thorough understanding and knowledge about the recent developments and innovations attributable to technological advancement and modernization of science in the healthcare framework will provide answers to numerous health related queries. In connection to this, an extensive and explorative literature reviews are carried out in the concerned domain of healthcare to identify and present the most recent technologies in terms of medical relevance, which are as follows:

Electronic health record (EHR) is a computer dependent documentation of patient’s health related information ranging from their demographics, vital signs, medications, notes on progress, laboratory investigation results, and pathological reports, clinical histories to immunization records and others. EHR takes into account the multiple healthcare encounters of the patients and thereby provide a holistic mode of treatment with scope for future referral and timely intervention. EHR follows evidence based practice of decision making ensuring improved care and management strategy, simultaneously evaluating patient’s health outcomes. The chief advantage of EHR lies in its accessibility and reproducibility (Baumann & Karel, 2013).

Telemedicine is an emerging branch of healthcare service where by virtue of telecommunication technology, diagnosis and cure for patients are possible from remote location. Electronic communication plays a crucial role in telemedicine by fostering data accessibility, portability, supervision and retrieval from distant places. Mutual exchange of information from the doctor and the patient’s end in telemedicine approach allows overall good treatment. Integration of telemedicine is evident in hospital infrastructure, specialized departments, private physician’s chambers, consumers’ homes and workplace settings. Wireless gadgets, e-mails, smart phones, video conversations provide tools of operation in telemedicine. Holographic data input procedures that allow the data to be easily accessible in a hospital setting without the need for any particular hardware component may be mentioned in this context.  Reports suggest that telemedicine is effective to breach the gaps in areas related to emergency services and provide service coverage in rural areas, ensures promotion of video empowered multisite group chart sites (Weinstein et al., 2014).

Electronic health record (EHR)

Automated healthcare kiosk for patients with chronic ailments provides a possible alternative to manage the diseases independently in primary healthcare setting. The crisis of primary healthcare workers may be effectively addressed through this leverage. However the patient’s or the user’s educational skill and linguistic proficiency may pose obstacle to utilize the service. Therefore optimization and modification of the kiosk facility is essential in this matter. Evidences revealed that the measurements obtained through this service corroborate to the manual evaluation of the clinical conditions like blood pressure and others. Frequency of physician visits can be minimized through fruitful implementation of this technology in addition to added advantage of scope for continuous monitoring of one’s own health (Ng et al., 2016).

Sensors and wearable technology are the potential targets and topic of research and development of current medical world. Pertaining to the beneficiary effects of these technologies, the applications have found wide-spreading implications particularly notable in cases of biomechanics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, motor skill evaluation. A particular utility of this innovation is in its quantification and accurate measurement ability. The progressive, debilitating neurodegenerative disease of Parkinsonism can be quantitatively assessed utilizing this technology. It allows for round the clock, uninterrupted, goal oriented and ecologically authentic data acquisition, as well as foster better patient and physician communication, impact therapeutic decisions thereby escalating the overall health status of the patient. The data obtained from the sensors and wearable technology worn by the patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease can be used as outcome variable for clinical trials (Maetzler, 2013).

Pharmacogenomics is a conglomeration of two disciplines of pharmacology and genomics aimed to develop safe and effective therapeutic and drug regime or dosage customized in accordance to a person’s genetic makeup.Pharmacogenomics along with genome sequencing have received much attention in the healthcare industry anticipating the functions and performance of the genes and its genomic variants in medical treatment outcomes. Predicting the patient’s response to a particular drug via genetic tests elucidating the genes and the networks is an important application of this technology. High throughput genetic technologies combine the central concepts of both the fields to improvise a tailored, most appropriate drug therapy for the patient to incur the best possible outcomes (Sharma, Ayyaswamy, & Kishore, 2015).

Biomaterials of synthetic or natural origin used in healthcare system nowadays integrate the principles and concepts of various fields such as material science, cell biology, nano technology and medicine. Research from all over the world focus on the durability, compatibility and safe production of biomaterials that can lead to tissue regeneration following adverse conditions under given suitable microenvironment, cytokine and growth factor abundance situation. Incorporation of the bioactive ligands within hydrogel scaffolds for the cells to act and absorb within the matrix is the basis of designing the modern synthetic biomaterials. Tissue repair and regeneration is promoted through development of novel biomaterials that substantially imitates the tissues’ natural healing environment. Determination and direction of the fate of stem cells, promotion of shuttle mediated drug delivery are few of the important applications of biomaterials (Rice et al., 2013).

Telemedicine

Prosthetics or artificial body parts are generally preferred among the victims of wars and people who had encountered traumatic brain injury. Prosthetics act as assistive technology for the wounded survivors to effectively cope up with their daily lives. The interface enables the persons to develop an interaction compatible with the neural circuits of the brain devoid of any latency. Patients undergoing medical amputations, suffering from neural disorders and spinal cord injuries are benefited utilizing the technology through neurologically empowered state-of-the-art limbs of prosthetic type. Prosthetics have undergone major improvements and modifications in the healthcare setting in an attempt to provide the affected with quality life behavior (Murphy, 2013).

Ocular prosthetics is relatively novel technology that works by means of fitting artificial eyes and offer rays of hope for persons with eye related complications or those who have encountered serious eye injuries (Starling & Brown, 2015).

Artificial retina is meant meant for restoring the vision in people who are suffering from retinal degenerative diseases and have lost their vision during the period. Simulation studies explain the efficiency and utility of this sophisticated technology pertaining to artificial retina made out of poly Si thin film transistors (TFTs). Supply of wireless power to the artificial retina is suitable for epiretinal transplant upon the curved human eyeballs (Yamamoto et al., 2016).

3D printing in medical field is an evolving technology that has the potential to transform the pharmaceutical industry to a great extent. It may be applicable to printing live cells, organs, dental implants, preoperative models for complicated surgeries by head and neck surgeons as well as face reconstructive surgeries by plastic surgeons. This technology helps the surgeons to get an overview of the precise location information of the bodily organ thereby minimizing the operating time and maximizing the operational outcomes. Normal and pathologic anatomy of the actual patients can be retrieved in conjunction with the computer based programs. Bony fractures complexities can also be well noted through 3D technology usage. Therefore 3D technology has the potential to literally shape the future of the healthcare industry (Michalski & Ross, 2014).

Tooth regeneration is a highly conserved evolutionary process in vertebrates from lower mammals to humans. Stem cell research in the recent days have highlighted the need to re-grow the missing teeth through implementation of low power LASERs to activate the stem cells that in turn stimulate regeneration of dental tissues from dental progenitor cells to ensure morphological diversity in dentition (Tucker & Fraser, 2014).

Automated healthcare kiosk

Robotic surgery is a common practice among the present day surgeons and physicians to improve the quality of healthcare in the patients and optimize the surgery outcomes in them. It is widely practiced in cases of coronary artery bypass, hysterectomy, tubal ligation, colorectomy and others and has strong advantages over other endoscopic techniques. Small tools fitted to the robotic arms connected to a computer enable the surgeons to carry out the operations. Benefits of such surgery are evident from faster recovery, shorter hospital stays, less operation-borne scars, lesser chances of infection, bleeding. Virtual reality simulators aid the progression of the robotic surgery within a safe setting (Abboudi et al., 2013).

Thus evidences from reviewing the literatures brought to the forefront the above mentioned technologies and innovations of the present generation in healthcare services that hold promises for both present as well as the future.

Conclusion:

Healthcare industry has evolved over the years. Services being available from hospital and laboratory settings have now been extended to home setting also. Cutting age technological advancement is credited to reflect these positive outcomes. Everything staring from patient admission, medical data retrieval to medical examinations and monitoring of the patients have undergone rampant changes attributed to digitalization and extensive uses of virtual interfaces in computing and evaluation alongside technical improvement in operative healthcare. Collaborative contributions from allied disciplines like engineering, biology, informatics, mathematics and others are the pivotal driving forces for facilitating these changes and up-gradations. Thus, technology in conjunction with the medical discoveries and innovations offer the hope for the coming days.

References:

Abboudi, H., Khan, M. S., Aboumarzouk, O., Guru, K. A., Challacombe, B., Dasgupta, P., & Ahmed, K. (2013). Current status of validation for robotic surgery simulators–a systematic review. BJU international, 111(2), 194-205.

Baumann, L. C., & Karel, M. A. (2013). Electronic Health Record. In Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine (pp. 669-670). Springer New York.

Maetzler, W., Domingos, J., Srulijes, K., Ferreira, J. J., & Bloem, B. R. (2013). Quantitative wearable sensors for objective assessment of Parkinson’s disease. Movement Disorders, 28(12), 1628-1637.

Michalski, M. H., & Ross, J. S. (2014). The shape of things to come: 3D printing in medicine. JAMA, 312(21), 2213-2214.

Murphy, D. P. (2013). Fundamentals of amputation care and prosthetics. Demos Medical Publishing.

Ng, G., Tan, N., Bahadin, J., Shum, E., & Tan, S. W. (2016). Development of an Automated Healthcare Kiosk for the Management of Chronic Disease Patients in the Primary Care Setting. Journal of medical systems, 40(7), 1-11.

Rice, J. J., Martino, M. M., De Laporte, L., Tortelli, F., Briquez, P. S., & Hubbell, J. A. (2013). Engineering the regenerative microenvironment with biomaterials. Advanced healthcare materials, 2(1), 57-71.

Sharma, S., Ayyaswamy, J., & Kishore, J. (2015). Technology Driven Healthcare. Advanced Techniques in Biology & Medicine, 2015.

Starling, N., & Brown, S. (2015). Ocular prosthetics in the UK: Hope beyond trauma. International Journal of Ophthalmic Practice, 6(1), 43-47.

Tucker, A. S., & Fraser, G. J. (2014). Evolution and developmental diversity of tooth regeneration. In Seminars in cell & developmental biology(Vol. 25, pp. 71-80). Academic Press.

Weinstein, R. S., Lopez, A. M., Joseph, B. A., Erps, K. A., Holcomb, M., Barker, G. P., & Krupinski, E. A. (2014). Telemedicine, telehealth, and mobile health applications that work: opportunities and barriers. The American journal of medicine, 127(3), 183-187.

Yamamoto, Y., Ishizaki, T., Matsuda, T., & Kimura, M. (2016). Wireless power supply to artificial retina using poly-Si thin-film transistor. InFuture of Electron Devices, Kansai (IMFEDK), 2016 IEEE International Meeting for (pp. 1-2). IEEE.