Bridging the Gap: 5 Surprising Ways IT Is Improving Healthcare

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When you think about how technology impacts healthcare, electronic health records and telehealth likely come to mind first. However, innovations in information technology stretch far beyond those obvious use cases.

Here are five surprising ways IT is revolutionizing healthcare delivery and patient experiences.

1.  Enhancing Security and Compliance

Healthcare generates massive volumes of highly sensitive patient data. Ensuring that information’s security and privacy while maintaining regulatory compliance can be an immense technological challenge.

Sophisticated IT managed services can help protect sensitive healthcare data through robust access controls, encryption, audit trails, and risk monitoring. Organizations can deploy solutions like data loss prevention, security incident and event management, and managed security services.

Automated IT-managed services continuously apply security updates, monitor vulnerabilities, and enforce least-privilege access protocols. Robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans also ensure medical data availability during disruptions.

2.  Advancing Medical Training

Virtual reality and other immersive technologies elevate medical training beyond textbooks and lectures. VR simulations enable students and residents to practice complex procedures repeatedly in risk-free environments until they build competency and confidence.

They can experience true-to-life scenarios that would be unethical or dangerous with actual patients. Three-dimensional anatomical models provide a richly detailed visualization of human anatomy impossible to replicate through traditional means.

Wearables, on the other hand, offer point-of-view recordings to analyze provider/patient interactions and communication skills, while adaptive learning platforms personalize educational content delivery to each user’s pace and knowledge gaps, pinpointing where extra focus is needed.

3.  Enhancing Patient Engagement

Engaged, informed patients tend to have better health outcomes and lower costs. IT facilitates this critical engagement through tools like patient portals, self-service platforms, and remote monitoring devices.

Instead of just getting a brief snapshot during annual check-ups, doctors can monitor how patients are doing on an ongoing basis. This allows them to flag potential issues before they become bigger problems, facilitating timely treatment and awareness.

And patients feel more accountable and motivated to make healthy choices when they constantly see those insights. It’s putting individuals in the driver’s seat of managing their care, as opposed to being passive recipients.

4.  Streamlining Clinical Workflows

Antiquated workflows can be a significant administrative burden on the healthcare system. Clinicians waste extensive time tracking down data across disparate systems and paper records, and these inefficiencies can delay care delivery and drain productivity.

IT solutions streamline and optimize clinical workflows by consolidating data and facilitating smoother information sharing. You have interoperable electronic health records that grant providers a comprehensive, real-time view of the patient’s complete history across practices.

Clinical decision support tools embedded directly into EHRs offer point-of-care guidance that can be crucial to improving patient outcomes and reducing medical errors, while mobile devices let nurses and doctors securely access data and enter updates at the bedside.

Then you have speech recognition and machine learning that can help automate documentation to minimize administrative toil.

5.  Facilitating Preventative Health

Preventative healthcare focuses on promoting wellness and preventing disease from occurring in the first place rather than merely treating acute issues.

IT has enabled a shift in that direction through predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, wearables, and patient-facing engagement apps.

AI systems can analyze enormous datasets identifying risk factors and anticipating potential health events before symptoms present. Predictive modelling reveals patients likely to develop costly chronic conditions so preventative interventions can be deployed early.

Activity trackers, smart scales, and other connected devices can help motivate people toward healthier lifestyles.

Expanding Patient Access to Care Through Technology

Information technology is a transformative force enhancing healthcare delivery and outcomes far beyond obvious applications like telehealth or digitized medical records. From engaging patients to optimizing clinical efficiency, IT empowers better care experiences and results.