Introduction:–

The healthcare industry in India as well as globally has seen an accelerated growth during last decade. In context of Indian market, industry effort is to provide quality healthcare at reduced cost and to improve patient outcome through technology advancement. Technology adaption in diagnostic sector has been slow but has gained pace in recent years.

Since the last few years emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, digital healthcare, improved medical devices have reshaped the healthcare system and directly aided a patient’s life and treatment. Healthcare industry particularly diagnostic is leveraging technology to make healthcare affordable and expand its reach beyond big cities and in untouched corners of our country. Further, insights from data will lead to a paradigm shift in decision making across stakeholders of disease detection and management and also in prevention.

Leveraging Digital Technology to make it Convenient & Affordable:-

The future of healthcare in India is digital technology and personalised medicine and this is apparent with consumers making the shift from offline to online. With improved internet penetration, consumers are making most of their decision on smartphone. By using these processes diagnostic sector is making it convenient for patients. Instead of a patient visiting the hospital to get his blood tested, healthcare providers are collecting blood samples at home. Blood and urine reports are getting delivered online within 24 hours. Appointments with Physicians and surgeons and conflations on therapy are being done on Smartphones.   

Advent of smartphones into healthcare has revolutionise the healthcare industry by bridging the gap between demand and supply of healthcare specialists. Imagine a world where personalised intelligent diagnosis, alerts corresponding to chronic ailments and smart home monitoring are the order of the day.

Some of the benefits are that health specialists will have access to the smartphone-enabled medical system, personal medical records, health history, diet and fitness and will be able to provide a contextual medical diagnosis.

Future digital integration of offline and online healthcare delivery will pave the way for an end-to-end healthcare ecosystem, accessible to all.  The healthcare platform of the future will connect, remind, prepare, inform and empower the patient in their healthcare journey. End-to-end healthcare platform will service needs of the customer at different stages.

IoT, Big Data Analytics is the future:-  

Medical technology is an integral part of the entire healthcare ecosystem, right from screening and diagnostics to treatment and care and monitoring of patient’s health post treatment. In this context, adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, block chain and other advance technology will help professionals by providing reliable, affordable and innovative diagnostic solutions. Diagnostic industry will look for following in the future.  

• Data Integration– In recent years, the diagnostic industry received a boom and to meet the expectations, various laboratories has LIS (Laboratory information system) and as well as medical analytical devices with more accurate data management received a thrust. Medical devices can easily integrate with LIS to manage a huge bulk of data starting from initial ordering, to the reports of the testing and results to the clinical staff.
• Data Management- It can improve the quality and cost of healthcare. Hospitals and other medical sectors have lots of data to store and compile. With the introduction of analytics and software, it became easy for the patients to get their reports and data comfortably.

Connected Healthcare from Diagnostic to better Healthcare outcome:-

Diagnostic business models are changing with the introduction of HLM (Hospital Lab Management companies), pathology Labs owning various central and satellite labs, Franchisee models, and Reagent rental model by companies, among others. Further, we can use sensor and machine data to generate actionable information related to consumption patterns (time of day, day of week). New technology can be used to effectively monitor and manage devices from a remote location through cloud based lab management systems.

Connected Health involves several components as:-

• Telehealth/Telemedicine– The use of telecommunications and electronic information to deliver healthcare outside of traditional healthcare facilities.
• Remote monitoring– Medical devices that can be monitored and track information related to patients health.
•  Personalised healthcare– For example the use of genomics to determine risk of disease. 6. Population health management – The use of big data and predictive analytics to determine drivers and actions to improve the health of entire populations. Here, the goal is prevention rather than treatment.