Innovation, disruption, and change lead CIOs’ minds as we explore the future of healthcare and life sciences.
The “Advancing and Enhancing Patient Care” panel was insightful and spanned topics such as innovations with care management, health-based investments, and connecting medical research to life-saving innovations. The panel discussion was lively, and as a result, much was covered. There was also a lot that I didn’t have time to cover within our limited timeframe. I want to introduce new insights; I didn’t have time to share them today fully.
The earlier pioneers in life sciences
New technology is reaching far beyond the bill and paperwork. Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics investments will enable the more intelligent use of multi-sourced data. This newly created data can help fuel clinical trials and accelerate research and development initiatives in the labs. Innovation is driving change in how we interact with patients.
- Remote patient monitor
- Start drug delivery systems
- Biometric trackers
- Ingestible sensors
- Medication adherence
- Diseases management apps
We’re hopeful that the 21st Century Cures Act will accelerate interoperability and patient access. This is a decisive step towards making the theory of continuum of care a reality. The recent MyHealthEData initiative promises to enable better access to patient’s medical information to promote better decision making. The Medicare Blue Button 2.0 initiative has solid traction and over 1,100 organizations already involved spanning 3,000 developers dedicated to making a change in patients’ access. This is compounded with the Patient Access API, which required health insurance exchanges to allow patient access to data through third parties, which went into effect on January 1, 2021.
There still are significant obstacles to providing seamless care, akin to a one-click amazon buy button. We’re not there yet. How will access to video CT scans be provided? To what device will patients download their MRI images? Who’s supporting this bandwidth? In the haste to introduce new technology, software companies forget about their customer: healthcare forgets about the patient experience. We can do better. Connectivity is the answer.
Italy has already figured this out. In Italy’s Lombardy Region (near Milan), the Agency for Innovation and Procurement (ARIA) has created a digital information hub integrating into a single platform more than ten years of health data for 10 million people living in the region. This sets an excellent foundation for virtualized care.