How Digital Health Connectivity and Data Transformation Can Help Close Critical Patient Care Gaps

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the paradigm for the healthcare industry by paving the way for the wider use of telehealth and other digital medical advancements. However, it has also brought to light the problem of healthcare inequality and its well-documented effects on racial and ethnic minorities, rural areas, the poor, and the elderly.

Healthcare data analytics solutions aim at lowering treatment costs, anticipating outbreaks, preventing diseases that can be prevented, and generally improving healthcare services. However, as healthcare has improved, people are living longer on average, which is creating new problems for healthcare professionals throughout the world, particularly in terms of how to offer treatments.

The use of big data in the healthcare sector is increasingly important than ever in situations like the situation humans are in when patient conditions are deteriorating owing to COVID-19 on a worldwide scale. By enhancing patient quality of life, lowering reliance on emergency and late-stage interventions, and preventing premature deaths, equitable access to inexpensive and competent healthcare has the potential to enhance patient outcomes.

Importance of Digitalization and Data Transformation for Patient care

A healthcare strategy that is patient-focused must include the utilization of Digital Transformation. Healthcare providers will be able to operate more efficiently, comprehend patient needs, foster loyalty and trust, and give a better user experience. The enormous US healthcare industry is anticipated to grow by 29.6% CAGR from 86.4 billion USD in 2018 to 504.4 billion USD in 2025. By foreseeing disease outbreaks, reducing the cost of medical care, and avoiding illnesses that may be avoided, healthcare data analytics systems can improve the quality of healthcare services overall. However, as healthcare advances, the human lifespan rises, posing new challenges to medical professionals throughout the globe, particularly with regard to patient treatment methods.

Balancing healthcare access and quality has positive benefits on the economy as a whole because it allows patients to live active, productive lives and enhances individual and population-level results. Statistics indicate financing for digital health startups hit a record $29.1 billion in 2021, with more than $0.5 billion going to firms that focus on social determinants of health and marginalized communities. Indeed, during the past century, a quarter of all economic development in sophisticated nations has been attributed to advances in global health. Digital health solutions are specifically created to target previously marginalized or underrepresented populations in order to maintain a healthy digital and transformed growth pace.

Addressing Patient Care with Digital Solutions

It takes a lot of work to close patient care gaps, but digital technologies and data transformation can be crucial in that effort. Digital health entrepreneurs can start to imagine how their solutions can address health equality by drawing inspiration from start-ups and established leaders in the industry.

By expanding healthcare access, addressing unmet needs, customizing treatment for patients, and taking into account the historical context of the communities they serve, digital technologies and data transformation can increase patient equity.

To create and expand their solutions to have a significant impact, digital health entrepreneurs can benefit from understanding these areas of potential.

●??????Improve access to healthcare - In addition to expediting complex medical bureaucratic procedures and removing travel and transportation barriers from healthcare access, digital transformation has the ability to reduce gaps in patient treatment in a number of other areas as well. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine and enhanced access for patients who are not always able to travel for appointments, by lowering costs and increasing the accessibility of diagnostic services outside of conventional healthcare facilities, such as portable diagnostics, and medical technologies, data transformation can revolutionize healthcare.

●??????Address unmet needs - Access to clean water, wholesome food, secure housing, and transportation are just a few examples of the social determinants of health that have an impact on patients' capacity to stay healthy and seek care when necessary. Insufficient access to high-quality treatment combined with unmet social needs may result in a feedback loop where one condition erodes the other. In order to break this loop, product creation should take into account the socioeconomic determinants of health and the unique medical requirements of patients.

●??????Consider the historical context - By interacting with patients through new channels and supporting them with reliable digital resources and databases, digital health enterprises can gain their trust. People's comfort level with seeking treatment and utilizing innovative services is influenced by their community's previous interactions with the medical system.

●??????Market competitiveness - Proper patient data collection may significantly improve the quality of services offered to patients, which would also lead to improved market positions and larger profitability. According to research, healthcare organizations may reduce yearly healthcare expenses by 25% by increasing data collection and processing. To get the desired results, healthcare providers might use the most latest data collection, analysis, and software tools.

Improving health equity with improved digitalization

Understanding how the technology may be used to address issues facing healthcare providers, such as staffing and utilization, operational efficiency, and improved patient experiences, is the first step in realizing data analytics' promise to revolutionize the healthcare sector. Data Transformation and healthcare digitalization is the key to gaining access to understanding patients' needs and wants and are essential to providing patient-centered care. ?

Best practices in leveraging data transformation in various healthcare areas include-

1. Collaborate with patients - Digital health tools and data integration aims at providing a holistic approach to healthcare providers to access accurate data and provide patients more control over their respective health and needs. Digitalization and data transformation facilitates information, connectivity, and convergence of patients to improve healthcare operations and enjoy personalized healthcare services.
2. Integrate equity in commercialization - Healthcare digitalization brings diversity and inclusion to the basic operational platform to provide equal treatment to patients. Verifying accurate data and information reduces biases and incorporates creative digital solutions to improve equity, and diversity in health services.
3. Partner with communities - Patients may not always trust the services provided by businesses outside their known periphery. Big data tools can increase effectiveness and efficiency, but patient outreach still relies on interpersonal contacts and local ties. Community partnerships may assist the users of new digital solutions and help bring a product or service to a population. They can also give community-level data that can be used to track and detect care gaps.

Benefits of Digital Health Connectivity and Data Transformation

Quality improvement in healthcare settings attempts to deliver patients safe, effective treatment while lowering the trauma associated with such care. The benefits of Digital health transformation are -

1. Improved Staffing with Patient Prediction - One of the major issues that prevent healthcare practitioners from providing patients with optimal treatment is staffing. Labor costs make up around 60% of hospital budgets, and future pay and compensation increases are predicted due to the expanding need for healthcare professionals. Big data solutions in the healthcare industry allow HCPs to identify relevant staffing patterns and have accurate staffing predictions with optimal staff communication.
2. Enhanced Electronic Health Records (EHR) - Data transformation is widely used in improving Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, which is one of the most well-known uses in the healthcare industry.?Every patient has a digital record with the hospital that contains information about their medical history, personal characteristics, allergy reports, results of laboratory tests, etc. These records are accessible to the care providers at all times and are shared with the appropriate departments via secure information systems.
3. Better Real-Time Alerting - Real-time alerting is another area where data analytics is enhancing the healthcare sector. Patients need extra attention since emergencies can happen at any time, especially in light of the present COVID-19 conditions. Predictive analysis of data analytic solutions is useful in these situations. Real-time data analysis monitors the presence of any anomalies and alerts concerned HCPs for emergency services.
4. Improved Patient Engagement - Quality improvement in healthcare settings attempts to deliver patients safe, effective treatment while lowering the trauma associated with such care. In order to achieve this, healthcare professionals collect and analyze patient data, increasingly in real-time, in order to comprehend the complex healthcare environments of today, to develop and implement a systematic approach to improve patient outcomes, and to continuously develop, test, and implement improvements to healthcare processes.

Final Thoughts

Digital thinkers have an unrivaled chance to consider health equality more seriously and create fresh solutions to persistent healthcare issues. They need to think about how to access disparities and reduce the number of "reachable" patients before deciding which aspect of health inequality their solution could address. The difficult task of creating and putting into practice digital solutions that support the objective of health equity follows. Patients' lives will be improved, healthcare systems will be more effective, and the economy as a whole will benefit from digital entrepreneurs who can make a difference in health fairness.

JK Tech has established itself as a market leader in providing complete automation services. Based on our considerable experience in data transformation, we offer hyperautomation-based healthcare solutions to aid healthcare providers.