Linkedin Article: Tech Time

Article 1 – Healthcare Tech Trends for 2021: New Tools to Watch

(Adapted from Health Tech Magazine, Published on December 20, 2020)

There has been unprecedented changes due to the pandemic across and in some cases the changes are permanent like to healthcare delivery. A strong, technology-driven response to address urgent needs will have positive implications that last beyond the current health crisis, giving patients and providers new options for preventive care and better connectivity.

The COVID-19 vaccines are on the way and the patient expectations quickly shifting, these will bring plenty of hopes to consider in 2021. Here are 5 things to consider –

1.      Patients Will Increasingly Drive the Healthcare Experience –

• As hospitals continue to handle high-risk cases and work to deliver long-distance care for nonacute cases, there’s an increased need for patients to take a more proactive role in their health – hence, more personal technology will be integrated to enhance and address shortfalls in home healthcare delivery.
• Organizations are supporting this movement by optimizing and expanding their telehealth programs and setting up “digital front door” portals that offer a variety of self-service functions and messaging services.
• Efforts to curb readmissions, which have taken on higher importance in recent months, are being bolstered by health IT teams launching and expanding wearables and remote patient monitoring programs to collect and transmit patients’ vital signs from afar. Providers, though, must be ready to handle issues of education and connectivity.

2.      Permanent Changes to Hospital Design and Cleaning Technologies -

• To keep spaces more sanitary, healthcare providers are looking to a host of tools to tackle the critical tasks of deep cleaning and enforcing good hygiene. They’re also changing layouts and check-in processes to reduce clustering and identify contagious visitors before they enter a building.
• Deployments may include autonomous robots that emit germ-killing ultraviolet light to decontaminate rooms in 15 minutes and RFID technology to track how long and how often employees wash their hands. More hospitals are using thermal cameras at entryways to detect those with elevated body temperature, a common but not universal symptom of COVID-19.
• Expect to see more design changes to buildings - include convertible spaces to accommodate temporary surges in critical-care patients, transparent glass or plastic walls to view isolated patients, retrofitted rooms for delivering inpatient telehealth and tools such as touch-screen kiosks and handheld alert buzzers so people won’t crowd a waiting area before a visit. 

3.      AI and Automation for Efficiency, Reduced Clinical Burden

• The need for efficiency and touch-free interactions has the potential to boost clinical use of natural language processing — a branch of AI that allows computers to understand spoken remarks — by seamlessly transmitting data into a patient’s electronic health record. Alternatively, automated services such as symptom-checking chatbots will continue to ease administrative bottlenecks.
• High-level uses of AI will evolve to deliver personalized care. These may include algorithms and machine learning that can accurately detect cancer and heart disease, virtual assistants to deliver medication reminders and robot-assisted therapy for recovering stroke patients.

4.      Augmented and Virtual Reality Integration Across the Care Spectrum

• With the help of headsets and specially designed software, medical professionals are finding wider uses for augmented and virtual reality. The closure of classroom and clinical spaces during the pandemic underscores the potential.
• Options include lifelike surgical training programs, supplemental clinical experiences for nursing students, distraction for pain management and even the ability to view images with a new and detailed perspective
• VR also is also poised to gain traction in senior care communities. Although activities such as virtual travel and avatar-led chat rooms might seem like fun, the engaging and memory-triggering encounters can also be highly therapeutic. The technology, which can be used solo or in a group, opens up a new world for older adults during quarantine.

5.      Data Analytics, Interoperability to Support Widespread Vaccination

• Keeping tabs on scores of COVID-19 vaccine shipments as well as notifying and patients clamoring to be inoculated over two separate visits will require healthcare organizations to deploy strong data analytics and real-time tracking platforms to keep up with the changes.
• Likewise, increased data interoperability between different EHR platforms and healthcare systems will be critical in tracking who has been vaccinated. This will be key for general public health, of course, but also in ensuring accurate record-keeping if a person relocates or changes providers before the second vaccination.

Read more at - https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2020/12/healthcare-tech-trends-2021-new-tools-watch

Article 2 – Tech predictions for 2021 explained: The world inside your home

(Adapted from The Indian Express, Published on January 05, 2021) 

The new normal due to the Covid-19 pandemic has made working from home the need, and various technologies are emerging to adapt to this new reality. From 5G-powered extended reality headsets to virtual healthcare and gaming, expect 2021 to tailor technology to your life indoors

The 2020 have seen see the advent of 5G (India is is still a generation behind 5G) , better smartphones, smarter everything, more voice-enabled devices and data driven users. The pandemic has resulted in never-before imagined dependence on technology. The entire world was suddenly stuck at home with real life getting an unnerving accent of virtual reality as we tried to get close to friends, family and colleagues without actually being there. As social distancing ensured technology we had taken for granted, such as video conferencing and collaborative software, scaled up to new heights, it also burst many bubbles, especially those in the space of travel tech. And the Internet really came to the rescue as people across the world people kept their jobs because of this ubiquitous technology. What has happened in 2020 will have a significant impact in how technology shapes up in the coming year. How the tech world will look in 2021?

1.      Work from home

• If last year #WFH was an act of desperation, in the new year you will see more technologies that act as enablers for remote employment at scale.
• There is already lot of talk about extended reality, or XR, being extended to fill the gaps in our work environment. XR is a mix of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) that combine the realms of the real and virtual.
• In a few months, you could be back sitting next to your colleagues in office, though they are spread all over the country, thanks to a 5G-powered XR headset you are wearing to work from home or explaining a new project to customers in a virtual boardroom as they walk around scaled-down models, moving them with virtual swipes
• Laptop makers might finally start making a Full HD camera a standard feature because it has suddenly become the most important feature in the device. You could also see laptops with wireless connectivity become more common as these try to unfetter from Wi-Fi and offer a connectivity backup to those working remotely.
• This is where 5G could become an important part of enterprises in the coming year.

2.      Better homes

• This year could see a boost in how home entertainment technologies improve in the coming months. Television screens could become larger, offering immersive experiences and theatre-quality sound - with increased affordability of better technologies.
• A lot of the smart home technology so far has been worked around scenarios where the residents would want to control gadgets from their places of work. Now with all these users stuck inside the homes, smart home software will have to improvise and improve the experiences of people who have nowhere to go, keeping them entertained, informed and healthy.
• Also, expect gaming to enter our homes like never before. And no, it will not be limited to the younger ones. The segment is already in the midst of a boom thanks to the pandemic and now there will be new consoles and services that make gaming the vent for all your indoor frustrations, irrespective of age.

3.      Health for all

• Your doctor is now more accessible than before, often just a tap away on an app. While smart watches and other gadgets now offer more data on different aspects of the user’s health and wellness, the quantified self is going to get more attention now.
• Expect more wearables and smart gadgets near your body keeping a tab in not just the vitals, but also alerting you of what could be the early symptom on an underlying condition. There will also be a lot more assistance in the wellness space, especially with stress management.

4.      Intelligent data

• While we have been hearing about artificial intelligence for decades, the pandemic has presented these models with use cases at unprecedented scale. As countries try to figure out how to vaccinate sizeable chunks of their populations, intelligent systems like IBM’s Watson will come into play in helping figure out the rollout of the vaccines.
• It is not just about the vaccines: AI is already being used to alert about new Covid-18 hotspots based on early trends that are plotted against patterns seen elsewhere. Also, when there will be the question of how to tackle the surge in information demand from people as vaccinations starts, here too it could be computers that answer queries because of the sheer scale.

5.      More Made in India

• India has the potential to lay the foundation of a home-grown smartphone ecosystem this year, looking well beyond the software part.
• The country is already emerging as a smartphone manufacturing hub because of the large domestic market.

Read more at - https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/covid-19-pandemic-technology-2021-7128180/

Article 3 – What’s Next for Senior Tech? 5 Insights from the Thrive Center

(Adapted from The Indian Express, Published on January 08, 2021) 

There is an increasing trend for technology adoption among older adults, and there are no signs of slowing down: Those age 50 and older are using smartphones, wearable, voice-powered home assistants and other smart home technologies with almost the same vigour as younger people

Here is some of the home technologies and care delivery models poised play a greater role in seniors’ lives this year and beyond. 

Read more at - https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2021/01/whats-next-senior-tech-5-insights-thrive-center