If you work in the healthcare industry, you most likely have heard of Electronic Health Records (EHR). You've also most likely heard of the headache these systems can cause to a healthcare professionals' work-life balance. In recent studies, EHR's are a direct cause of physician burnout. The idea of an EHR is to help increase the quality of care for your patients, so far, it only seems to get in the way.
With a new year comes new opportunities, and several advances in technology will help fill the gap and relieve some of your time so you can do what you do best, take care of patients.
1. Speech-recognition Software Will Enhance Workflow and Experience
Healthcare professionals are no stranger to speech-recognition software, and it has already fundamentally changed the way professionals work in their practices. The next step is natural language processing, and it's becoming widely available. So much so that huge corporations are getting into the game. Amazon recently announced, "Amazon Transcribe Medical," a real-time automatic speech recognition for healthcare professionals. This breakthrough is at the forefront of speech to text software and will help streamline the documentation process that EHR's require. Turning documentation time into dictation time and comprehensively better-balancing healthcare professionals' work-life balance.
2. Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analytics Will Empower More Informed Care Decisions
Predictive analytics applications have existed for a while now. They already help physicians enhance the accuracy of their diagnosis and recommendations. Google has jumped in the game with a surprise reveal of their "Project Nightingale" earlier this year. Google worked under the radar with a vast, nationwide healthcare system to develop machine learning algorithms that help physicians navigate a database of diagnostics, treatments, and healthcare professionals. This search engine uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to gather information on symptoms, biometrics, and health history that are input by the physician in real-time. Then the AI compares that data with data from over 6 million health records to make recommendations on diagnosis, treatment, and specialist referrals.
3. Patient Access Will Continue to Expand
Enhancing the quality of care your patients receive is critical in today's healthcare landscape. Providing good quality of care is providing easy access for patients to their EHRs. Basic patient portals used to be the norm, only providing the essential functions, but as the healthcare and technology industry have grown together, telehealth has emerged. Telemedicine is a combination of virtual visits, health records, remote monitoring devices, and cloud storage. With all these features, patient portals have grown to include all of these features and more. Taking preventative health as a considerable increase in the quality of care patient portals now include wellness tips, virtual access to records, virtual visits, and much more.
What Does This Mean for Your Practice?
Here at Medicus IT, we want you to be in the best position possible to help your patients and still have a healthy work-life balance. One reason why we strive to be your all encompassed Managed Service Provider (MSP). If you have questions about EHRs, cybersecurity, disaster backup & business continuity, or any other IT-related questions, reach out to us today! We are here to help you help your patients.
You Treat Patients.
We Treat You.
