Why both technology and healthcare education matter? Well, it’s easy.

Why both technology and healthcare education matter? Well, it’s easy.

Following my previous post about the sustainable development goal 3, I thought it’s key to continue the discussion on topics with the enough potential to drive fast and powerful impact.

As a target of the UN goal, 3.C reads as follows: “Substantially increase health financing and the recruitment, development, training and retention of the health workforce in developing countries, especially in least developed countries and small island developing States.“

Without access to qualified and continuously trained experts, the development of healthcare systems in low- and middle-income economies will always be challenging. It is common sense that the healthcare professionals (HCPs) are the primary change agents in these markets, and the successful implementation of both new policies, but also healthcare best practices is depending and often primarily driven by them.

This is the reason why giving them access to appropriate training and development opportunities is vital. It is natural to think that recruitment, development, education and retention comes down to primarily healthcare, medical training. But in fact, with the convergence of medicine, care giving and technology, we are stepping into the era of Augmented Healthcare.

But how does one define Augmented Healthcare?

The patient journey starting from early symptom appearance, recognition, proper detection, to diagnosis, monitoring, treatment and management: every step will contain digital connections with different power, utility and importance, enabling the faster and more qualitative move to the next step in the journey. These digital connections will often be numerous, and if appropriately designed within the full journey – they will be integrated with the purpose of insight enrichment, where needed and where seen appropriate. The data coming from the patient, the living conditions, the surroundings, the public health information, and potentially also other social aspects will also be part of the net of information which will help the patient journey. With the appropriate data architecture, information can be transformed into insights, and if successfully validated, applied and refined – into wisdom useful to both HCPs, patients, payers, hospitals.

We live in times in which independent from our location, we are both producers and consumers of data. Even in most rough and rural conditions, data can be extracted and collected, and used for example to identify sources of disease outburst, spread, speed and penetration to other areas. Data can serve as a fuel to wisdom in predictive assistance, prevention and management, as a tool to enable faster and more accurate decision-making.

This is the reason why, beyond pure medical training, it is more imperative than ever, that technology and data science education need to be integrated in the continuous training and practice opportunities for healthcare professionals in developing countries.

Just imagine that a rural doctor receives hundreds of sms messages from patients, or from their concerned relatives and friends from different areas, all of which located too far from her, making it impossible to visit immediately. Now how would that doctor go about the way to analyze quickly the priority, severance, impact, and find potential correlations between high risk diseases vs more ‘trivial’ conditions; how would she go about the course of action needed, where to start, and how to do it potentially at several locations at the same time? How would she go about sharing objectively her experience to her network of colleagues? This is what Augmented Healthcare is all about – giving the right insight to what’s possible, how technology can help you to understand and transform data into wisdom, enabling you to then take the optimal decision. Not only that but, it is the path to shorten the healthcare professional’s learning curve in the different steps in the patient journey, be that for example the early the root cause detection or post-treatment management support.

Technology and data knowledge will essentially help as an additional binding element between patients and their doctors, nurses, care givers, and family. Allowing them to share, connect, engage, disclose without being judged, feel taken care of with less heavy financial transactions, design solutions together, and most importantly feel in control of what’s going on in their lives.

Giving access to not only health but also technology education and practice opportunities to both HCPs, patients, and their care givers is an enabler to faster solutioning, but also – to a peace of mind. 

*All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author.