What are the key trends in digital medicine?
By Barry O'Dowd
Technology is promoting changes in the provision of healthcare and medicine on a global basis. What changes can we expect to see in the coming years?
Gone are the days when healthcare was confined to a doctor’s office or a hospital. Information technology has introduced the age of digital medicine, and a growing number of traditional and non-traditional IT (information technology) companies are stepping into the fray, offering a variety of new healthcare tools and services.
Advances in sensor technology, widespread wireless capabilities and exponential increases in electronic data and digital analytics – these are just a few of the developments already revolutionizing health care and digital medicine, from disease prevention and detection, to treatment and monitoring.
The digital revolution is changing the very nature of medical practice.
Technologies such as telemedicine are redefining how doctors and patients interact, while new and plentiful sources of personalized health information and advice are, to some extent, replacing physicians.
Google, Apple and Microsoft have invested heavily in platforms that offer consumers the ability to track and capture data on their own health. These platforms and others like them are enabled by sensor-equipped, wearable devices that register movement, heart and muscle activity, as well as record an abundance of data points, such as body temperature, hydration, glucose and oxygen levels, respiration, ingestion and sleep cycles.
Governments are also playing a role.
In the United States, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is increasing readmission penalties on hospitals to improve the quality of care and reduce the high cost of repeat hospitalizations. This move has prompted hospitals to adopt telehealth solutions to remotely monitor patients after they have been discharged.
On the information-analysis front, the potential power of "big data" aggregation and cognitive computing is manifested in a very compelling way by IBM’s Medical Sieve project.
The name is based on the goal: to create a digital sieve that filters clinical and diagnostic-imaging data to help physicians diagnose and treat patients with more precision. The system relies on cognitive computing to analyze multimodal sources of data – such as pharmacy records, EMR, labs and ADT – combined with advanced clinical knowledge.
When proven, this technology will revolutionize the field of radiology, just as x-rays, ultrasound, PET scans and MRI have in the past. All these trends and developments foretell an increase in the growth and the prosperity of a fast emerging digital medicine industry sector.
Ultimately, digital medicine is promoting a major shift from the old, "one size fits all" approach to a much more cost effective, customized approach.
Adapted from . Access 25 Aug. 2017.
Glossary:
fray: batalha; widespread: altamente difundido; to be discharged: ter alta; sieve: ferramenta de filtragem; ultimately: em última instância.
Body temperature, hydration, glucose and oxygen levels are examples of:
