Healthcare is a new obsession post pandemic. Can Technology manage this new conscience?

Non-critical, yet essential: How frontier tech can help healthcare companies optimise non-medical processes?

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

— Mark Twain?

The Big Short opens with this witticism that highlights how we are often blindsided by assuming our assumptions to be incorruptibly correct. For the proof of its veracity, we need only to turn our attention to the most recent crises: the dotcom bubble, the 2008 financial meltdown, the Asian financial crisis, the Japanese property bubble.

India entered this ignominious list recently when its healthcare infrastructure crumbled under the stress of the second #COVID-19 wave. The shortage of vaccines and essential medical supplies, such as oxygen cylinders and injections, was painfully apparent. Hospitals struggled to accommodate the sheer number of patients who needed urgent medical intervention. For a country that was aspiring to become the medical tourism capital of the world and was the largest exporter of vaccines barely six months ago, this was unexpected and unprecedented.?

The worst bit? The crisis was avoidable – if we had only #paid #attention.?

Tracing the fault lines that shook India’s healthcare sector to find solutions for the future A point of note is that unoptimized medical and healthcare infrastructure is recognized as the major fault line running through the Indian healthcare sector. But these inefficiencies alone do not account for the latest shockwaves. Shortcomings in non-medical processes are equally, if not more, responsible for the collapse of the medical system during the second wave.

Challenges such as insufficient hospital beds and inaccessible or delayed medical consultation/tests were compounded by a lack of real-time information about where and when these services were available. Leaks in supply chain only exacerbated the already complicated problem of ramping up the manufacturing of essential supplies such as oxygen cylinders, concentrators, injections, etc.; the mechanisms in place to dispatch, track, and manage such inventories were so broken that these items, instead of making their way to the patient, often ended up on the black market. The lack of oversight on the reporting of new COVID-19 cases and related deaths also led to data manipulation and under-reporting, whether by accident or design, which only contributed to the crisis.

With experts warning of an imminent third wave, #healthcare service providers must improve not just their infrastructure but also how they manage non-medical processes – from patient intake and triage to supply chain and inventory management. More importantly, while they prepare for existing and known challenges, they must be prepared to manage bottlenecks that they are not even aware of.

This is where frontier tech systems that combine advanced technologies such as #AI, #IoT, #blockchain, and #big data enter the picture. Through strategic integrations across the healthcare value chain, these frameworks can power an efficient healthcare mechanism that is adequately supported by robust cross-functional, cross-industry collaboration.

After all, we already saw its potential during the second wave.

How frontier tech can unlock efficient solutions during emergency of any scale When the conventional #healthcare ecosystem was collapsing, conscientious citizens took to social media to share relevant information and resources in response to an overwhelming outburst of SOS calls. However, the information so shared became obsolete quickly while the onus of verifying it also fell upon the people already desperate for leads. In such dire circumstances, where time is of the essence, haphazard, scattered, and unverified information only serves to add to the challenge.

To resolve this pain point, many professionals, entrepreneurs, and organizations stepped up to offer their resources and know-how. Several AI-driven websites, applications, and platforms surfaced in the public domain, enabling people to access verified information and resources, conveniently and swiftly. These digital resources combined the power of cutting-edge technologies to leverage active intelligence, enabled by the analysis of historical and real-time data collated from various sources.

This is the underlying principle on which frontier tech operates – and the response of Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid provider, best exemplifies its potential to deploy an effective rapid response in the face of exponential threats. When the virus was raging in the US, Direct Relief applied smart analytics that collated data derived from multiple sources. Its frontier tech system converted these datasets into actionable insights, allowing the organization as well as US authorities to keep track of developments in real-time. This enabled them to map where new cases were found, the reasons behind the spread, etc. to swiftly act towards containing the outbreak.

#Frontier tech frameworks can also help to streamline logistics and supply chain processes, as well as to resolve existing inefficiencies. A logistics network governed by blockchain, IoT, geofencing, and AI, for instance, can be used to deploy an immutable, append-only electronic ledger that can not only streamline the supply chain ecosystem but also enforces accountability and improve transparency. This, in turn, can help healthcare stakeholders address many of the issues that contributed to making the nightmare that was the second wave, from limited to no transparency in transporting essential supplies to the lack of accountability that allowed unethical actors to hoard and black market them.

Further, AI, machine learning, and algorithms can streamline, automate, and accelerate logistics operations while weeding out human errors and enabling authorities to deliver relief to those who cannot reach it. The automated system can continuously update checklists of supplies to reflect real-time changes in the inventory. Combined with geofencing and location-based technologies, the tech framework can plan optimal routes that connect relevant addresses in the interest of punctuality.

Frontier tech can also enable strategic public-private partnerships for better last-mile connectivity to close gaps in rural healthcare supply chains and awareness. Such an intervention can not only save more lives but also limit the spread of contagious diseases and reduce the overall burden on major medical centres. The deployment can also improve the feedback process in the healthcare sector. With an efficient and robust data gathering system enabled by frontier technologies, valuable data that has remained untapped can be utilised to deliver better outcomes by improving procedures and delivery models.

The pandemic has underscored that the future is unpredictable; we are often wiser with the benefit of hindsight. #Frontier tech, however, offers a key to identify, make sense of, and proactively act on real-time developments with greater agility and alacrity. It can help the Indian healthcare sector avoid the mistakes of the past – and be better prepared for the future.