Information technology (IT) is revolutionizing healthcare in many beneficial ways. Moreover, its application is expanding at such a fast rate that industry experts expect healthcare IT to reach $390.9 billion before 2024. With such skyrocketing projections with us, what does 2020 hold for its different stakeholders? Here you’ll find the key tech trends that will disrupt and enhance healthcare. Here are the four main technology trends you may expect to impact this sensitive industry.
Blockchain
Blockchain is one of the key technologies in 2020 that will impact healthcare. By optimizing this tech, the sector will be able to place the right persons at the core of everything—patients. The technology will assist in enhancing the security and efficiency of electronic medical records. Moreover, industry experts expect the upward trend to surpass $1,636.7 million in the healthcare market before 2025. Here are some of the ways in which the tech trend will enhance health care:
Billing
With Blockchain in use, it will be easier for healthcare institutions to reduce potential fraud and inaccuracies forged transactions breed in their systems.
Drug fraud
Moreover, this tech will help in curbing drug fraud in the industry by tracking the whole manufacturing process behind all drugs. It will do this by adding all transactions to immutable blocks that it rubberstamps and tracks. Consequently, it hinders all possible tampering.
3D Printing
3D printing is one of the technology trends that are set to enhance this all-important sector this coming year. By using it, the industry will be better placed to arrive at customized patient care. For example, it will assist in recreating damaged body tissues through processes like Tissue Engineering. It will also help in personalizing surgical tools to enable doctors to make accurate surgeries and implant medical hardware in patients’ bodies.
Cloud Computing
This technology is one of the leading tech trends we expect to disrupt the health sector in the coming year. Players in the private and public sectors will use this tech trend to share large information files. Using this tech, players will utilize cloud computing to enhance digital tech throughout in building, running, and maintaining their records maintenance infrastructures.
Moreover, cloud computing will enable patients and industry professionals to retrieve patient information easily. Consequently, it will be easier to have better and more efficient consultations thus redounding to the patient’s ultimate benefit. For example, medical institutions are integrating video into their systems to enhance live consultations. This integration exerts pressure on the systems, thus necessitating the deployment of swift, safe, and reliable WAN connections. Therefore, this technology comes in handy to facilitate such processes.
Chatbots
Chatbots are easing communications in this critical sector. In this coming year, we expect industry players to harness chatbots to deal with routine queries using AI-powered messaging and voice systems. Consequently, they will save money. Moreover, they will enable the sector to deal with easy-to-diagnose challenges. This ease of diagnosis will allow medical experts to attend only to issues that need them. Consequently, they will optimize their time and concentration to serve patients better.
Moreover, medical experts can maximize modern chatbots in digital assistants in tracking patient contacts, book appointments with them, and make swift adjustments. Regarding patients, they can refill their prescription orders easily and streamline their billing processes. Lastly, this trend’s technology can also facilitate easy lab tests, thus enabling patients to get timely information regarding their lab procedure results.
The chatbot revolution also benefits aged patients because they can meet their unique age-specific needs. For example, many senior patients are forgetful, and hence, require constant reminders around them. By interlinking chatbots with other technologies, they can get timely reminders and even enjoy warnings regarding possible drug interactions.
For example, the UCLA has merged chatbot technology with AI to design a Virtual Interventional Radiologist (VIR). This system responds to FAQs using evidence. Consequently, it enables an interactive reading and answering of questions intuitively. Therefore, it makes the process quicker, simpler, and more beneficial to physicians.
Closing Remarks
Many trends in technology will disrupt the way the healthcare industry works in 2020. The four leading technologies that will shape how patients and medical practitioners will interact with the sector include chatbots, Blockchain, cloud computing, and 3D printing. Hopefully, these insights on significant technology trends give a better idea of what to expect in 2020.
