Across the Globe, Doctor’s Day is celebrated to express gratitude, remembrance and to appreciate the contributions made by medical practitioners. India recognized Doctor’s Day first time in the year 1991 on July 1st in recognition of the healthcare contributions that Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy made in his life time. He was very close to Mahatma Gandhi and also was an active participant in Civil Disobedience Movement against Colonial Rule. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy was a renowned physician in the medical history of India. He had a significant role to play in setting up Infectious Disease Hospital, Indian Institute of Mental Health and the first PG Medical College in Kolkata.
After practicing as general physician for a considerable number of years, I moved on to healthcare IT. The Information Technology in Healthcare has helped its infrastructure grow their reach exponentially. Most of these sophisticated systems have been built for better patient care. Once I moved out of regular practice to IT, I have been witnessing the value that IT can bring into healthcare. Go paperless; create patient portals, queue management system, EMR, Doctor-friendly applications and automate adherence to policies/compliance to name a few.
There has been increase in medical diagnostic equipments which are also getting smarter today. There are medical equipments that can record, store and share data. They have security layers that prevent them from sending any information to unauthorized users.
Technologies like AI, Big Data, Machine Learning and IoT are going to have tremendous impact in generating data and providing almost accurate inferences to enable better decision making by medical fraternity. Automated payer systems that can help Healthcare professionals to attend patients much quicker by reducing time consumed by registration-admission. Latest entrant like Block chain is going to redefine how the protected data of a patient or a process is going to be stored, shared and updated.
For me, more than the device, the features have more critical responsibility. They should allow doctors to record, assess and prescribe treatment plans in as much less time or clicks as possible. Though there is a growing acceptance of technology, we still see considerable amount of time spent on these tasks.
Today, there is an increase in the number of Doctors and Healthcare Entities that are open to the idea of Telemedicine, Telehealth, Remote consultations, Home-based Monitoring and wearable. IT-enabled infrastructure not only reduces cost of treatment but also saves time. On the other hand, it helps patients save time and money on traveling if not necessary.
Lastly, I’d say, “Information technology has lot to offer and healthcare would be one of biggest benefit gainers as it can reach out to more population and provide timely care with accurate decision making leveraging the new-generation data and diagnosis technologies.