New tech-based trends which will revolutionize patient empowerment

Healthcare is an industry of innovation: striving to combat the spread of disease, working to find cures for illnesses and trying to improve people’s quality of life. Over the last two years we saw innovation race forward as the industry faced pressure to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

No doubt, we will see even more technological innovations enter healthcare this year, with a trend towards empowering patients in supporting their own health – particularly in rare diseases, which are often underserved and lack data needed to drive advancements.

We have made huge strides and I find the advances fascinating. Their potential to take in data from around the world, ultimately improving care for people living with rare diseases, is exciting.

I share my thoughts on what I find most interesting: this is by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives an idea of the incredible work being done in healthcare today.

The medical ‘Internet of Things’

The Internet of Things (IoT) – connected devices which communicate and share data with one another – has revolutionized healthcare. The most popular recent example is telehealth, which exploded during the pandemic because it allows remote communication between patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs). But the IoT also includes wearable technology like smartwatches, keyboards that can detect health complications, and other smart technologies.

The IoT has allowed better communication between patients and doctors; faster notification of medical concerns; and remote monitoring of health to prevent hospital stays or readmissions. Perhaps most significantly for me, it allows us to gather data about diseases to better understand and treat people living with them. People with rare diseases are small in numbers and sometimes geographically spread out, making clinical trials hard to organize. With the IoT, their collective data can come together to enhance treatment and advance science.

Beyond its use for healthcare services, it has transformed how patients see their health. IoT devices have empowered people to communicate problems with their HCPs that may have been dismissed before. More critically, it lets them monitor and maintain their own condition, taking charge of actions that promote good health and avoiding factors which lessen it.

One of the most fascinating IoT-related advances I have seen relates to smart pills. When ingested, these pills transmit a message to a patch the patient wears, which connects to an app to monitor intake!

Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) is another well-known technology, but its healthcare applications seem to be less understood. The use of cameras, sensors and displays to overlay digital information onto the real world is critical to training HCPs and empowering people living with disease.

AR has many educational uses. Beyond functioning as an innovative tool to train healthcare workers on the anatomy of diseases or treatments, it can allow for visualization of data, such as CT or MRI data, during surgery. One of its most useful applications, however, is as a bridge between the patient and HCP perspectives, allowing simple and immersive two-way video communication and data-sharing.

With AR programs, patients can learn about their condition; they can also better understand how surgical procedures or medicines work by virtually seeing certain treatment effects or matching their symptoms to one of several options on-screen.

AR innovation seems to have slowed down over the past few years, but I believe it is only a matter of time before we will see a new wave of patient-empowering devices and applications.

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Artificial intelligence-driven clinical decision support systems

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a technology system providing HCPs with support on clinical decisions. In the past, these have not always been reliable, sometimes generating false alarms that can endanger patients through alarm fatigue or induce burnout for HCPs. Increased artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) sophistication could change this.

With more available data and greater analytical power, new CDSS can more quickly and accurately detect and diagnose adverse events (AEs), suggest precise treatment options, determine the potential of future concerns or AEs, and recommend medication and doses.

Misdiagnosis is a critical issue in healthcare. A false alarm is not only expensive, but also potentially fatal and undermines trust in healthcare systems. By reducing the possibility of false AEs or misdiagnosis, CDSS empower people by streamlining their clinical experience. Without the draining, time-consuming challenge of false alerts, patients are freer to focus on their overall health and other elements of their condition. An example is individuals diagnosed with diabetes, the delivery of high-quality diabetes care is a complex process that requires a provider to consider many pieces of patient information and treatment guidelines. Given that many recommendations for diabetes care are relatively well-defined, diabetes follow-up care is a good opportunity to use CDSS and begin combining different types of CDSS to support workflow transformation and improve patient care. ?

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Personalized digital twins

While a ‘digital twin’ truly sounds like something from a sci-fi film, the reality is more grounded. These are virtual representations – virtual twins – of a patient over the lifecycle of their treatment, designed to show how the body would respond to treatments or changes in its ecosystem. Feeding these twin systems with data, collected from wearables and other smart devices, provides personalized information to assist HCPs in diagnosis and treatment.

What does this mean for the patient? It means greater knowledge of their condition and understanding of how treatments will affect them. It can mean faster, safer clinical trials, as early-stage medication testing is conducted on these twins rather than people. This will better facilitate virtual treatment with fewer on-site visits, freeing up patient time and increasing safety.

The technology is not there yet – a full twin of the human body has not yet been accomplished, and smaller models remain expensive and limited. With increased focus in this area, I expect we will see a leap forward in patient and HCP empowerment.

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So, what’s next?

With all of these technologies, we still have barriers to overcome: issues of standardization across healthcare platforms, consistency of performance, the lack of trust in healthcare data science and lack of specific regulations addressing these technologies. But their potential benefits far outweigh negatives. As we collect more high-quality data through smart technology, we can better understand trends and patterns in disease. With this insight, we can realize more effective individualized treatment management, especially in challenging disease areas.

Technological innovations like these will not only streamline treatments and revolutionize hospital care: they can ultimately empower people everywhere through information and engagement, enhancing interactions between them and their HCPs. It is an exciting time, and I cannot wait to see how these innovations progress. I encourage each of you to get familiar with these developments, lets actively take part in building the future of healthcare!