Shabnoor Hirani Bhalerao, Product Manager DHS, Getinge, India highlights that digitisation has not only revolutionised patient care & experience but has also prevailed hospital management to accept ways of improving efficiencies through digital solutions & tools
Digitisation seems to have become a buzzword today, not only in our daily lives but also in healthcare. As our World gets more and more connected, we find digitisation also making its headway slowly and steadily into the healthcare industry. Forgotten are the days when teleconsultation and telemedicine were looked down upon with doubt, when AI based diagnostic tools were considered uncertain and when hospital efficiency reports were drawn using MS Excel. Digitisation has not only revolutionised patient care & experience but has also prevailed hospital management to accept ways of improving efficiencies through digital solutions & tools.
The awareness towards digitisation and its acceptance as a tool for efficiency optimisation promises a fast-paced, innovative & engaging future for effective Digital Health Solutions. Scalable, modular, and user-friendly digital solutions are finding their value in today’s healthcare market. These solutions, when implemented in high revenue areas such as ORs & ICUs and in high costs areas such as CSSD & Sterile Supplies Management can help hospitals significantly improve their top line as well as bottom line. VoIP based OR Integration Systems and comprehensive Sterile Supplies Management Solutions are particularly gaining popularity in India, followed by AI based OR scheduling and BI based Patient Flow Management
Digitalisation is about using advanced technology to remove unnecessary administration, enhance resource utilization and increase operational efficiency. A system that ensures better care & easier work with reduced efforts truly fits the bill for a good digital system. However, as with any other industry trend, it is often natural to over-look some of the basics of a good system in the quest to ride the way of latest trend adoption. Summarised below are the key ingredient of an effective digital solution.
The most important components of a robust digital solution are its scalability and user-friendliness. Often, these core components, when missing, lead to a failed digital transformation. Thus, every penny & minute spent towards implementing a state-of-the-art, modular & scalable solution that is centered around intuitiveness & ease of use is an investment in the future. These basic requisites often get shadowed by cheaper, makeshift, and outdated systems that seem lucrative to begin with but are non-starters when it comes to user adoption and progression.
Having understood the pre-requisites of a good digital system and the perils of not choosing the right one, it is necessary to understand the prioritisation matrix of its implementation in a hospital. The obvious first choice is areas of clinical excellence – the heart of patient care at the hospital. In line with this, we are witnessing revolutionary growth in digitisation of clinical practice & medical technology used in patient care. The increased use of surgical robots, generative AI based diagnostics, medical XR (Extended Reality – which includes Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for surgical modelling), remote & non-invasive monitoring & diagnosis are all examples of increased digitization towards medical excellence.
The next level of adoption has been witnessed towards improving access & experience for patients & their families. Telehealth, in its various forms such as teleconsultation, remote monitoring, video telephony, telemedicine, etc. has gained immense popularity & acceptance for improving healthcare reach in the country. Similarly, chatbots and virtual assistants are being more actively used by hospitals for providing an intuitive and personalised patient experience while streamlining operations and simplifying systems. Appointment scheduling, handling queries and patient engagement are some of the areas where these virtual assistants have been found to be most useful.
Furthermore, government initiative of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) with its building blocks of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) number, Personal Health Records (PHR), Health Professional Registry (HPR), Health Facility Registry (HFR), Drug Registry and the Unified Health Interface (UHI) are paving way for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country through a digital eco-system.
While digitisation is positively impacting access, experience & clinical care for patients, it is imperative to build this into the hospital eco-system as well where it can transform care giver & hospital staff experience. Only when digitisation for patients compliments with digitisation for hospital staff, the total experience will witness harmonious enhancement. Thus, the next level of digital adoption should be towards hospitals operations. This has partly begun by increased adoption of advanced patient queue management systems, appointment scheduling systems, asset management & accounting systems, etc. However, there is still significant scope in this area to bring together all these diverse areas of hospital management together to form a digital ecosystem of patient-staff-material management.
The approaching exciting times for the Indian healthcare industry brings a promise of a more connected, efficient & safe hospital workflow. It is best for hospitals to ride this wave of progression by fast adopting robust & reputed digital solutions to keep themselves relevant & top-of-the-mind for their patients and staff.