The way healthcare services are provided is evolving due to technological advancements, including telehealth technologies that link patients and healthcare experts in a virtual setting and wearable gadgets that offer earlier diagnoses and prescribe personalized treatments.
Technology helps professionals in the field of public health obtain and analyze data so they may better serve their communities. There are numerous opportunities for public health experts to develop and apply cutting-edge public health technology solutions that can greatly improve patient care. Now, let’s explore how online medical platforms disrupt the traditional healthcare model.
How are Online Medical Platforms Disrupting Traditional Healthcare Models?
Since technology includes both life-saving and data-gathering instruments, there are many different ways in which it and public health might work together. Although the following instances show this connection in wildly different ways, they are all motivated by the goal of enhancing community health.
Geospatial Technology
The ability of geospatial technology to deliver information that can help improve public health may be one of its most fascinating applications in health care. Geospatial technology gathers data on various variables, analyses the information, and presents the results on a multilayered map. At the same time, the demand for more and more effective medical marketing for doctors is increasing.
Geospatial technology, for instance, can offer detailed data on the prevalence of diseases in a given region, health risks by age demography, care delivery logistics, and other social aspects that affect population health. These multilayered maps can provide experts and the public with accurate information on the state of healthcare in a region, enabling decision-makers to enhance the areas they control.
Wearable Technology
Users of wearable fitness bands can conveniently track their daily movements. Individuals can more effectively identify, track, and achieve their health and fitness goals using metrics like total steps done, heart rate, run or ride pace, or the quantity and quality of sleep each night.
For people who routinely use a wearable monitor, this data can be used as a reference point when speaking with medical professionals about general wellness objectives or other health markers. In response, health insurance companies have developed incentive programs to promote the adoption of wearables.
Beyond fitness, wearable technology is developing to track essential data, including a user’s blood sugar, heart rate, lung function, and blood oxygen level. Even monitoring and warning systems for the start of degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are being developed.
Twitter Monitoring
Twitter has much more to offer than tasty celebrity rumors and mouthwatering culinary images. Medical professionals use the well-known microblogging platform to monitor the development of infectious diseases. Compared to past techniques, such as using public labs and Google searches, Twitter has shown to be a more accurate way to track the disease. In addition, medical professionals may perform medical device marketing on Twitter to grow these techniques.
3D Printing
With the help of 3D printing, medical experts can create patient-specific anatomical models that precisely reproduce a problem area within a patient. Then, to provide a more well-informed solution to the operating room, surgeons can physically handle the models, inspecting them and simulating several different treatments. This not only improves the team-based training environment but also makes it possible to create treatment plans that are more specialized, tailored, and exact, which raises the standard of care while also lowering expenses.
Telehealth
PCs, mobile devices, and cell phones are facilitating patient-provider communication. For example, through apps like Doctor on Demand and NowClinic, those who are too ill to visit a clinic, lack access to reliable transportation, or are short on time can video chat with a qualified healthcare professional. Major participants in the health insurance sector also include some telehealth in their range of health care choices.
Also, a continuing medical education program provides opportunities for health professionals to update the knowledge, skills, and practices involved at different levels of healthcare delivery systems and/or in biomedical research.
Final Words
Medical professionals use various tools to enhance patient care and results, including telehealth, wearable technology, 3D printing, and geospatial technologies. Each of these existing and future public health technologies has the potential to impact a community’s health and well-being significantly. Yet, only time will tell what other high-tech tools will revolutionize public health in the future.
