“IT in healthcare will be the key component of change in healthcare,”said Vishal Gupta, VP and General Manager, Global Healthcare Solutions, Cisco, during the release of their latest study conducted on global customer experience and their attitude towards virtual healthcare, especially telemedicine.
The findings from the survey conducted globally indicated a growing shift in consumer’s expectations on medical services in India. It also examined perceptions of consumers and healthcare decision makers (HCDMs) on patient experience in healthcare.
The report shows that as information, technology, bandwidth, and the integration of the network become the centre of the ‘new world’, both human and digital aspects are key parts to the overall patient experience. These components lead to more real-time, meaningful patient and doctor interaction. The survey studied the views of consumers and HCDMs on sharing personal health data, participating in in-person medical consultation versus remote care and using technology to make recommendations on personal health. Views on these topics sometimes differed widely between the two groups (consumers and HCDMs) and the 10 geographies surveyed.
The global report, conducted early this year, includes responses from 1,547 consumers and HCDMs globally, with a consistent sample size of around 200 local respondents in each of the 10 countries surveyed. Additionally, consumers and HCDMs were polled from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages within each country.
Gupta informed that the report findings challenged the assumption that face-to-face interaction is always the preferred healthcare experience. While consumers still depend heavily on in-person medical treatments, three- quarters of patients and citizens are comfortable with the use of technology for the clinician interaction. Moreover, he went on to say that the Indian healthcare industry needs to create intelligent network in order to increase healthcare access.
Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Chairman, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Asia Pacific India Chapter gave a presentation that indicates the state of IT in healthcare, in the next five years. Speaking to Express Healthcare’s Sr Correspondent, Raelene Kambli, he said that government, insurance, healthcare providers, international development, professional developments, CAG and PACs will be the key drivers of growth in the healthcare IT sector. “In the next five years connectivity may not be an issue. Government’s web portal on health would be live and running, all states would have initiated state wide telemedicine network and the government will have issued IT-enabled National Health Entitlement Card (NHEC) to citizens. Moreover, Central government will be directly release money to the states through an IT enabled system, therefore IT will act as a key component for government’s healthcare funding”, he added.
Dr Chhavi Mehra, MD, Diplomate American Board of Internal Medicine, Chief of Quality at RxDx – a multispeciality hospital who has partnered with Cisco in their telemedicine project conducted in Bangalore and Andhra Pradesh shared her experience working on the telemedicine project. She mentioned that telemedicine has really increased accessibility of healthcare and patients have really responded positively to the new virtual healthcare delivery tool. She sums ups saying, “In a country where on an average, we have one doctor for 1700 citizens while the optimal average should be one doctor for 600 citizens, this report gives us great hope when we see that patients are comfortable about clinical interactions using technology or virtually, instead of in person. As machines become connected and networked, they can play a large role in the overall health care experience.This can help immensely to balance the doctor-citizen inequity we see in India as well as the urban-rural imbalance in terms of resource availability.”
EH News Bureau