With the new year underway, healthcare organizations are prioritizing the use of technology to optimize the delivery of care.
Technology-enabled healthcare — specifically virtual care — will continue to evolve in 2018 to meet current and future needs of healthcare organizations, providers, patients and members. Here are a few expectations for the new year in virtual care technology:
Easier to Use: The underlying technology will be much easier to deploy, learn, and use. Ease of use is critical for widespread adoption and ongoing usage. Cutting-edge communication platforms will be intuitive; providers and patients will not need in-depth training to start using virtual care as an alternative method of accessing or delivering healthcare from any place and at any time.
Expanded Usage: Virtual care technology will be applied to more use-cases, more roles, more facilities, and more patient populations. Smaller and/or rural hospitals will benefit from being able to use technology to connect with specialists from other facilities. All patients can receive the care they need – whether it is in the form of virtual consults or a series of virtual visits – despite their geographical distance from their providers, related specialists, and traditional care settings.
Emergent Care: Technology that supports virtual consults will help facilitate more real-time, life-saving communications between providers, specialists, and patients. Whether the patient is in an ambulance, in the ED, or in another care setting, more providers will be able to access offsite specialists for timely, critical diagnoses and decisions regarding admission, treatment, or transfer. Patients will receive the right type of care at the right time.
Extended Communications: Virtual care technology will also be used to extend the reach of provider communications to also include the caregiver in critical discussions. During the transition of care, family members will be integrated into the care conversations – regardless of the distance from the patient and the care setting.
Enhanced Impact: Technology is advancing, impacting the way we live, and presenting new opportunities to improve the delivery of healthcare. Overall, technology will help improve the US healthcare system by addressing the Triple Aim: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs of health care. Virtual care technology is emerging as an influential factor which will better the timing, quality, and cost of care delivery.
By Lee Horner, CEO of Synzi
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