The global digital health market size reached $430.53 billion in 2022, up from $145.57 billion in 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 16.9 per cent. Here, Dr. Dheeraj Rathee, Chief Technology Officer of Provide Digital, explores how digital transformation is driving innovation in healthcare, creating new models and cultures and enhancing processes and user experiences.
Artificial intelligence is getting increasingly sophisticated at doing what humans do, but more efficiently, more quickly and at a lower cost.
It stands to reason therefore that the potential for both AI and data analytics in healthcare is vast.
From chronic diseases and cancer to radiology and risk assessment, there are nearly endless opportunities to leverage technology to deploy more precise, efficient, and impactful interventions.
What’s more, it can offer a number of advantages over traditional analytics and clinical decision-making techniques with machine-learning algorithms offering a more precise and accurate approach to gain unprecedented analytics.
One of AI’s biggest potential benefits is to help people stay healthy, so they don’t need a doctor, or at least not as often.
One of our first projects at Provide Digital explored this, allowing physiotherapy patients to self-refer and provide a wealth of information at that point to allow for efficient triage.
The physiotherapy self-referral system (SRS) came about thanks to a Knowledge Transfer Partnership bringing together myself and building on my PhD work in Artificial Intelligence and our Managing Director Paul Twyman, with his expertise and background in Neuroscience
At the time, it was taking upwards of three months for a patient to access treatment as a result of lack of information provided surrounding the injury and determine the urgency of the triage.
The digital system cut waiting times down to just a week for those in most urgent need.
On top of this, if the patient was not deemed to need urgent care, they were directed to other features on the app that taught them how to manage and treat their condition at home.
Elsewhere in the digital healthcare revolution, applications and apps are putting consumers in control of health and well-being and increasing the ability for healthcare professionals to better understand the day-to-day patterns and needs of the people they care for.
For example, AI is enabling review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster than it was with 99% accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies and the proliferation of consumer wearables and other medical devices combined with tech are being applied to oversee early-stage heart disease.
At the 2018 World Medical Innovation Forum (WMIF) on artificial intelligence, members showcased the 12 technologies and areas of the healthcare industry that are most likely to see a major impact from AI within the next decade.
Among these were the ability to enable to next generation of radiology tools that are accurate and detailed enough to replace the need for tissue samples, imaging tools that can screen chest x-rays for signs of tuberculosis and electronic records that create more intuitive interfaces and automate some of the administrative or routine processes that consume so much of a user’s time.
This is something we successful deployed during the Covid-19 pandemic through a Bed Bureau System that provided bed management online to determine where beds were available in community hospitals and through Provide My Staff which allowed for rapid reorganisation of staff from to increase the capacity in critical areas.
There’s also a significant drive toward the use of smartphones and wearable tech from apps that track your heartbeat around the clock, to clinical quality imaging through selfies.
Apps like our eC-Card work well on a smartphone, allowing people to use geographical pinpointing to access locations for free condoms – and provide sexual health providers with data on who is accessing the service and where.
It’s clear to us – and to most healthcare providers out there – that leveraging AI for clinical decision support, data collection and diagnosis can transform the lives of patients and reduce time and budgets for health trusts.
In short, we, like many other companies in this sphere, are helping usher in a new era of clinical quality and exciting breakthroughs in patient care.
We know we can create digital solutions to streamline services for your trust – so get in touch for more information. For more information on our products and services visit www.providedigital.com
