5 Ways Tech is Transforming Medicine

It’s exciting to see when tech continually makes inroads in such observably beneficial ways. Here are five ways tech is impacting patient outcomes today. There are many others and we are excited to see what the future has in store.

Full Transcript Below:

Cody:

There are fewer errors with medical apps, right?

Cris:

Right. My health experience is now on my time, as opposed to the doctor’s time, which I think is huge.

Cody:

Think a lot of people are ending up just a little bit afraid to go to a hospital.

Cris:

You go into an ER or a hospital. And you’re like, “I’m here with all the sick people.”

Cody:

Yeah.

Cris:

All right, Cody, today we get to talk about apps in general. So we obviously build tons of applications but want to focus on the medical vertical.

Cody:

Yeah.

Cris:

Healthcare applications. Everyone can benefit obviously from an app, but I think medical has had a lot of benefits. So we’re going to talk about basically the five benefits of using medical apps.

Remote Healthcare

Cris:

Number one, for me, is just the healthcare experience being remote, remote healthcare. I used to have to book an appointment on a Tuesday at three o’clock in the afternoon and work around some schedule to go do a physical. Or even if I’m sick and need help with something, I had to actually see a doctor or a nurse in-office at a particular day and time. Whereas now I can do a telehealth type of…

Cody:

Yup.

Cris:

Experience and I can be on a camera and talking back and forth. And my health experience is now on my time, as opposed to the doctor’s time, which I think is huge.

Cody:

Yeah, definitely. I wouldn’t disagree. I mean, ultimately we still have to schedule things.

Cris:

We still have to schedule things, of course.

Cody:

We have to be somewhere at three, in front of an iPad, but that’s still super convenient, especially post-COVID too. I think that’s a big benefit is that a lot of people, depending on how you look at the whole thing, a lot of people are ending up just a little bit afraid to go to a hospital.

Cris:

Sure.

Cody:

No one really wants to be in that waiting room with the three dudes who are coughing and look like they’re about to die.

Cris:

We all were thinking about it for years and years and years. You’d always go into like an ER or a hospital. And you’re like, “I’m here with all the sick people.”

Cody:

Yeah.

Cris:

And then suddenly, the world kind of shifted, I think in the last few years and we had COVID and people are starting to become more aware of, yeah, maybe when I’m sick and slightly compromised, I don’t want to be around other sick people.

Cody:

Exactly.

Cris:

And so is there a way I can remotely get my healthcare? Yeah. I think it’s really great. And it’s going to stick around.

Cody:

I agree. I totally agree.

Fewer Errors

Cody:

Moving on though. There’s also number two, there are fewer errors with medical apps. Right?

Cris:

Right. Sure.

Cody:

Yeah. So the idea that, especially if you don’t have a centralized hospital you go to, and you go from clinic to clinic, like you go to see your primary care and then he prescribes you, “Oh, hey, we need an x-ray, go over here.” “Oh, hey, your prescription’s ready over here.” The idea that that communication no longer has to be just a phone call or a handwritten note.

Cris:

Right.

Cody:

And not to make fun of doctors, but I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a handwritten prescription note, it’s a meme of itself. And I think having that data be digitally transcribed and transmitted leads to better outcomes for patients ultimately, because they’re a lot of, it’s a sad fact. If you ever look at the statistics of what actual practice error can result in, but it’s bad, and you don’t want it to happen to you. And I think having that stuff digitally recorded, audited, and tracked and not relying on handwritten notes or vocal communication, that is just a better outcome for anyone, wouldn’t you agree?

Cris:

Oh yeah. I would agree completely. I mean, I came from the era of literally having a vaccine card that was handwritten out and you would go get a booster shot somewhere. And then yeah. If you went to the other clinic, you’d grab and be like, “These are the things I’ve had,” and they’re like, “Okay, cool.” And now again, in the last few years, it’s really important because you might have to go get a COVID test somewhere at some clinic. And then your main practitioner actually gives you the initial shot and then you go get a booster at some other clinic. All based again, off of healthcare now being owned in my space, I want to know that that’s digitally been tracked along the way within an app. And I’m not getting double-boosted or under-boosted or whatever it is. Just vaccine records, in general, being digitized has changed so much and hopefully less errors that way.

Cody:

Yeah. Honestly, to touch on that, before we go into another subject. I’ve had a lot of personal experience with that too, with getting different vaccinations like we all have. And I think I went to my primary care like practitioner and got a few of my little boosties, as they say, and then I went to a different one and I like, “Man, I’m going to have to go talk to my hospital about this.” And then, I got it done. And then the next day it was on my record and I was like, “How’d they do that?”

Cris:

How’d they do that?

Cody:

It’s magic.

Cris:

Yeah. So what’s cool about that is, and I think this takes us to point number three is you’re owning your healthcare. You have fewer errors.

Wearable Technology

Cris:

And now with wearable technology, number three, wearable technology, we can actually have an application to integrate now. We’re all wearing smartwatches. Diabetics, for years now, they wear insulin pumps that have the ability to actually transmit information to an application. All kinds of smart technology allows not only you as the actual wearer to be able to benefit from the information and feedback that you’re getting, but now that’s also going to your doctor. It’s going to the healthcare providers. And they’re able to track sleep patterns and they’re able to track glucose levels. And there’s so much wearable technology now that has existed for a long, long time. But to be able to actually tie it into an app, I think is extremely crucial.

Cody:

Oh yeah. I don’t disagree at all. I know, especially you mentioned everyone’s wearing smartwatches and I was like, “Yeah.” But no, you’re not wrong.

Cris:

Who’s your boss? He needs to pay you more.

Cody:

I have an Apple Watch. It’s just never on me.

Cris:

Oh, okay.

Cody:

Anyway, so yeah, the amount of technology that we can use to actually just over time, get records from ourselves, the biometrics that are not, have not historically ever been available. A doctor only sees what they can witness. Now they can see your whole, like you say, “Oh, I’ve had this symptom since this period,” they can look back and see, is there any difference in those vitals? And understanding that information I think is massively powerful for any type of diagnosis for anyone. And that, again, much like the last thing that we were talking about, leads to better outcomes. Right?

Cris:

Agreed. Even, I mean that age-old question, you go into the doctor’s office. They’re like, “So are you staying at active? How often do you exercise? And unless you’re one of those people where you’re like, “I go to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays from blah, blah.” You’re like, “Yes, I’m staying active.” Whereas now I can literally be like, “Oh yeah, here’s all my data. It says I went on these walks on these days of the week and I played soccer on Saturday and I ran X amount of miles.” I could say, “This how active I am, doctor.” And they can much more uniquely tailored to you say, “That’s great,” or say, “You need a little more activity.” “Wow. You’re old, you’re working out too much, slow down. You’re going to break your heart.” That’s never happened to me. They’re like, “You need to exercise more.”

Cody:

You need exercise. Yeah. I wonder the day when those will get so advanced you’ll just get a text message from your doctor at 11:30 at night on a Friday.

Cris:

“You’re dying.”

Cody:

Just like, “Hey, stop eating chips and drinking beer,” it’s just an update. So that’s great.

Speed of Communication

Cody:

And I think stemming off of the wearable technology, obviously part of that is number four, greater speed of communication. The main thing is that we talked about fewer errors, wearable technology, and remote applications. All of this really ties in to being able to have the healthcare system work faster and more responsive and more reactive to what is going on right now, instead of waiting for a bureaucracy trail, which still exists on the insurance side. But in terms of actual medical practice, things are getting a lot quicker because now we have technology that will allow information from one provider to the next provider instantaneously. And then at that point, it’s just, how quickly can they look at it? It doesn’t have that middleman. So I think that that generally is going to again, improve patient outcomes a lot with that speed of communication just being added straight to the whole stack of improvements, thanks to technology inside of the medical space.

Cris:

Yeah. And I’ve seen it even happen. My kids recently had a change in school and we had to swap from one school to another school very quickly, literally over a weekend. And there was different vaccination needs, different medical record information that wasn’t provided to new school. And so we both were able to just get that information over digitally extremely quick, but also go get some shots and boosters and things that needed to happen. It all was on their record and was all over to the new school, literally in the course of hours. We didn’t even need the full weekend and it was done. And they were able to be at one school on Friday and a completely different school on Monday. And that was due to this fast data transfer, which is just wild.

Cody:

Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Artificial Intelligence

Cris:

But with all this data, I think the ultimate use of data is the gold that it is. And how do you mine that and what do you do with it? And how do you basically use, I think, AI and algorithms and technology to basically provide information?

Cris:

So AI, and just now having all this data that we’re collecting, I think it’s so helpful for healthcare providers to be able to actually look at trends and patterns based off of this data and use artificial intelligence and machine learning to actually be able to help provide you a better level of healthcare than you probably were getting before. If you again, are wearing wearables and it’s pushing this data and it’s actually being checked on the regular, that’s very different than, I go to the doctor every 10 years for a physical exam. And I cancel twice.

Cody:

Don’t at me. Don’t come at me, bro.

Cris:

And yeah, I think artificial intelligence as a whole is just changing healthcare.

Cody:

No, I agree. I think an unfortunate side effect of having so much AI in the healthcare industry is that in a lot of ways, the cart came before the horse. We had AI and neural processing, neural network AI, and whatnot available long before we had the quality of metrics that would be necessary to make any reasonable deduction from such an advanced AI. And I think now finally, that horse is being built with the advent of more wearable technology.

Cody:

And I think there’s still a lot of improvements to be made there. If I have a rash on my arm, right? How does the wearable know about that? Right? There’s certain qualitative metrics that just, there’s no solution for. I’m not even sure if there would be a solution for. But I do think that there’s a lot of benefits to just standard systemic vitals and being able to plug that into an AI saying, “Hey, so I noticed you have some sort of a heart arrhythmia that is consistent with X, Y, Z conditions.” And the AI makes that, sends it to your doctor, and the doctor’s like, “Oh, that’s bad. He needs to get in here now.”

Cris:

Yeah. Or even just the rash and being able to analyze a bunch of pictures of rashes and be like, “That doesn’t look like a good one. We’re not certain what it is, but why don’t you go talk to a human that can discern what this rash is,” is helpful. And it’s just, you couldn’t do that before. So it’s just wild how taking that healthcare experience, bringing it remote, everything now is having less errors. We got the wearable tech, we’re tracking all this data. It’s so fast. AI. It’s just changing healthcare as a whole.

Alexandra:

Thank you so much for joining us with this episode of Bixly Tech Tuesday. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Cris and Cody, as they talked all about medical apps and the improved benefits that we’re seeing for patient outcomes. It’s just amazing to see. If you have any questions at all, go ahead and leave them in the comments and we’ll get right back to you.

Alexandra:

And don’t forget to check out the description box down below. We have a bunch of really helpful links for you. And in particular, I want to highlight our free DevOps guide. It has a bunch of great information if you’re interested in a DevOps implementation and of course, check us out online, bixly.com. It’s a great place to learn about all of the different services that we have, including a free 60-minute call with Cris. All you have to do is hit that button right at the top that says “start my project roadmap.” Until next time, this has been an episode of Bixly Tech Tuesday.