One of the best uses of technology in healthcare has been to facilitate the possibility of the connection of a holistic healthcare network that includes all services and caregivers and that has no geographic limitations. A truly connected system goes beyond hospital care to incorporate full patient care wherever that patient may be – at home or anywhere in the world.
A refusal to accept change is one of the primary reasons why projects tend to fail, or not proceed in the manner intended by project managers and transformation teams. In the digital age, a major aspect of change is moving from analogue, or paper-based, systems to digital ones throughout an organisation.
The use of speech-to-text software can be a game-changer in healthcare as we continue to evolve with the incorporation of more advanced technology in our efforts to digitise the sector. Any clinician or administrator who seeks to improve efficiency across the board in the healthcare setting should consider this to help to speed up processes within their organisation.
COVID-19 has immensely changed the way we do things in almost every sector, healthcare included.
Humans are social beings and so it is understandably difficult to be isolated from others. Since the beginning of the pandemic, one of the biggest challenges faced by families is the inability to visit loved ones who are ill in hospital. It can be a very lonely journey if one is ill with little or no familial support, which could negatively affect recovery. There have been reports of mental health issues increasing during lockdown.
Saving time and moving efficiently at the first point of care at a hospital usually comes down to the ability to quickly and accurately triage.
Triaging refers to the categorising of people who seek care into most and least urgent and by the type of care they will need based on their complaints and symptoms. When we speak about waiting time at hospitals, it is usually at this stage that this has the most impact.
Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean have a virtually untapped resource in medical tourism. Of course, there are places that offer this, but the extent to which we could be benefitting from such an industry is massive and not truly being exploited.
There’s a wealth of data in healthcare that can be used to determine how to manage many other areas. For example, an illness in a geographic area can alert health managers to a problem plaguing people specific to that community. This may have an effect on issues such as productivity and mental health. Solving this problem will have positive economic, social and health benefits.
Cybersecurity has been an important point of discussion for the last couple of years, and with good reason. As we continue to advance technologically, ways of intruding upon people’s privacy and compromising their online safety have also increased. Health institutions have to take particular care to prevent being compromised because patient data is highly sensitive and valuable.
We have been talking a lot about the digital future and the paradigm shift that has taken place in healthcare that sees us looking towards having technology as a major part of the system for the benefit of patients, caregivers and society at large. In fact, many strides have been made towards this in many countries, Jamaica included. We are now in the process of starting the groundwork for full digitisation of some of our public hospitals and health centres.
We don’t often consider the importance of oral health to our overall well-being. The focus tends to be on extracting teeth that have gone bad rather than creating a holistic oral healthcare plan and matching the record and diagnoses to people’s larger health realities. If we are to begin to focus on holistic health and wellness, oral health must be a part of the equation.
