Software Engineering Insights

The healthcare industry is adopting technology for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are some of the technologies that are making waves in the health-IT sector, enabling stakeholders to refine the quality of health.

The digital health market is expected to reach 206 billion U.S. dollars by 2020, driven particularly by the mobile and wireless health market. | Statista

The digital care platforms are taking over the healthcare sector and the investments in it manifest its growth rate. Moreover, consumers are embracing digital health systems, giving better opportunities to providers for care delivery.

Chatbots have been the most followed trend. These mini software programs that mimic human conversation are appreciated for sorting a number of tasks for businesses and as well as their customers. That is why it is predicted that by 2020, 25% of the customer service operations will be managed by virtual customer assistants, such as chatbots.

The smart speaker market continues to grow, with global shipments tripling from 3.9 million units. These speakers, integrated with virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana is enabling users to perform tasks like checking the weather, asking to turn off the lights or play favorite music, set reminders, and a lot more with voice instructions.

In Healthcare Industry, a lot of information exchanges happen between hospitals, doctors, clinics, pathology labs, blood banks, equipment manufacturers, and patients. Since the nature of the information is very confidential and personal, ensuring security of the data is of top most priority. At the same time, the information can’t be locked away in silos since ease of accessing this information is crucial to the functioning of an establishment providing healthcare services.

According to a 2017 report by the World Bank and WHO, almost half of the world population can’t access basic healthcare services. The report further highlights that there is an inconsistency in the availability and affordability of healthcare services even in the developed world. For example, in America, a study conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance founded that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death.

Human care and technology play a key role in the Healthcare Industry. While technology can’t replace the human touch and emotions, which is the soul of this industry, it can surely help in eliminating the limitations of human capabilities.

The healthcare industry is leaverging digitization and consumerization for connecting patients with relevant providers. Remote consultations, patient portals, appointment booking platforms, online pharmacy are some of the prominent modes for patients and providers to access and deliver care, respectively.

The global trends in technology are shaking the industry architecture, resulting in disruptive non-conventional business models. Healthcare industry is no exception. Healthcare software companies are starting to innovate their business models in order to respond to new trends.

Digitization is reviving the healthcare system, at both patient and provider end. While options like patient portals, mhealth apps are simplifying care-access for patients; solutions like electronic Health Records (EHR), Practice Management System (PMS) are offering innovative modes to streamline care delivery and manage administrative operations for providers.