Collaboration is key in healthcare

The pandemic brought several realizations to all of us, but the healthcare industry had the major One; The need to collaborate, work fast and bring about a solution.

While the world was isolated, the healthcare industry had to network. Thanks to it, the vaccine by Oxford/AstraZeneca came out in a quick time. Collaboration between different sectors brought on a revolution and this set the stage for several medical breakthroughs to come forth in the future. For a long, networking was nil in healthcare. Doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and dieticians remained in silos. You must have experienced back-and-forth visits between various departments in a hospital.

Instead, imagine a team of healthcare professionals working together, identifying the symptom exactly, and treating it. The result? Health care becomes more patient-centric. This not only benefits the patient but also the entire health care system. Research has shown that such collaborations reduce medical errors, duplicative tests, and also the number of patient visits. It serves as a brainstorming opportunity for professionals from different fields, thus enriching their cross-field knowledge.

Collaboration brings great value to the entire industry. It offers strong associations and opens up fresh perspectives and ideas, career advice, and support, among others. Traditionally, networking was done through meetings, conferences, and events. Today, healthcare professionals have social media platforms focusing specifically on their sector. It is like LinkedIn for healthcare. This serves as a networking ground for doctors to build up a portfolio and, in turn, connect with others. It allows them to share their expertise and gather ideas.

This networking platform has now led the way to create educational resources. Experts collaborate and offer highly interactive online courses. Professionals have the freedom to attend to them from their own space and at their pace.

Sites like MedGuru, have especially curated educational courses that help professionals to stay abreast of trends and also understand what happens across the globe. The future of learning and collaboration is becoming more technology-driven. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) provide immersive and interactive learning opportunities where the learner gets to experience concepts firsthand. This technology is used for both learning and training and also to educate patients better.

Taking this to the next level, when AR and VR are coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI), medical students, doctors, or surgeons get to practice complex operations, making no surgical mistakes.

In the near future, it is expected that doctors can virtually guide other medical professionals during patient care. It also opens opportunities for robotic surgery where high-precision operations are done by robotic devices guided by a human surgeon. While this technology is at its nascent stage, its penetration is expected to expand in the coming years.

All these happen at the confluence of the healthcare industry with other sectors. This cross-networking brings in new ideas and technology makes healthcare affordable and patient-friendly.