The Future of Healthcare and Associated Risk

No doubt, the future of healthcare is very bright and humanity will be benefited. In my view future will bring following changes in healthcare sector:

1.?????Better Patient Care: Medical professionals will be benefited by new technology which will increase their knowledge about their patient’s conditions and access to data can improve care of patients of performance of devices in long term. ???

2.?????Patients can stay home: Remote monitoring reduces hospital visits, saves cost and reduce the risk of a patient being misdiagnosed through doctor induced stress. ?

3.?????Improve Insights: Big data analysis can help anticipate seasonal developments and future outbreak.

4.?????Quicker Response Time: Devices trigger an emergency alert if the health of a remotely monitored patient drops to a dangerous level.

5.?????Instant results: Data can be offered in real time by simply downloading or uploading it straight from device.

6.?????Automated Supply Control: Supplies can be monitored and replenished without human intervention. ?

Extra Functionality Brings Extra Risk: As with all product design, the combination of new technology and added complexity brings a greater risk for both device manufacturers and users. It is vital that manufacturers take full responsibility for the quality of their products and not only when driven by legal and regulatory requirements.

The hazards that come from connecting medical devices to the internet fall into three major categories:

1.?????Software Safety: Systematic failure is a hazard for any kind of software. What seems like a small mistake in a line of code can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Software errors and bugs be lethal for patient’s life.

2.?????Device Security: There could be deadly consequences if a hacker with fraudulent or malicious motivations succeeds in attacking a device such as a pacemaker or an insulin pump.

3.?????Data Privacy: The digitization of medical data has made it easier to illegally access confidential information, meaning that device manufacturers, hospitals and clinics must take care to protect the privacy of their users. Many times, it has been seen the data sold to telemarketing company.

Therefore, manufacturers must overcome many challenges to make medical device connectivity a safe and viable reality. ?This can be achieved by the first identifying potential safety and security threats and then defining counter measurers to prevent them from becoming a problem. Finally, manufacturers must establish proper processes for testing, certification, and maintenance. That’s how future of healthcare will be bright in real means. ??