Collaborative tech to change the face of Healthcare

We are at the dawn of a technological revolution with healthcare delivery displaying immense growth opportunities. Walk into the nearest clinic and one will not be surprised to see doctors using smart devices for updating patient data or storing medical records. There is a paradigm shift in healthcare that has resulted in a need to integrate information, communication and healthcare. This revolution has brought about a wave of digital transformation in the way doctors and patients interact with each other.

  • Updated On Sep 8, 2014 at 01:06 PM IST


By Anuj Mathur

We are at the dawn of a technological revolution with healthcare delivery displaying immense growth opportunities. Walk into the nearest clinic and one will not be surprised to see doctors using smart devices for updating patient data or storing medical records. There is a paradigm shift in healthcare that has resulted in a need to integrate information, communication and healthcare. This revolution has brought about a wave of digital transformation in the way doctors and patients interact with each other.

Data collection and availability on the go has become the need of the hour with notable demands coming from the healthcare sector. With such needs, there is a rising demand to manage data and making relevant data available. With numerous patients, different diseases, various researches being carried out and abundant solutions being recorded, the need for managing data has become an integral part of the sector. As a result, there are a number of new and exciting opportunities that are emerging due to the availability of data and data analytics solutions, and the use of collaborative and mobile technologies in this space is growing.

The fundamental qualities of collaborative technologies are transparency, availability and connectedness. One of the areas where data collection and availability is being assisted to a great extent by the advent of mobile and cloud technologies is in the execution and managing large clinical trials that involves thousands of patients, doctors and investigators that are spread over several geographical regions and run over several months or years. Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes (ePro) data that is collected from such enormous trials offer a wealth of information and intelligence to pharmaceutical companies in the process of drug researches. Another application of mobile and big data technologies is in clinical epidemiology studies involves health related surveys performed on specific demographic groups over several years resulting in very large volumes of reliable and actionable data. These studies provide unprecedented insights for deriving better health products for this demography with the help of data analytics and big data technologies.

Almost all world economies are driven upon patient healthcare applications. One such example is the US healthcare market space. Though not completely dependent but the US healthcare market is driven to a great extent by patient care applications. It is seen that some of these patient care applications utilize the social media paradigm to create large collaborative groups of patients, healthcare providers, doctors, hospitals and insurance providers, bringing them into one connected ecosystem. While a major objective of these applications is to improve communication between patients and healthcare providers; the data collected from these applications result in providing valuable insights into specific patient groups and help in addressing patient needs. Another area of focus, especially with mobile apps, is in developing applications to address and improve quality of life issues and rehabilitation of patients recovering from debilitating illnesses and events like stroke.

The time is right, the markets are opening up and Indian IT companies are in a great position to fill the need of a growing healthcare market all over the world with their expertise in technologies like big data, mobility and the cloud.

- The author is CEO of Q3 Technologies
Picture Courtesy- Flickr.com
  • Published On Sep 8, 2014 at 12:59 PM IST
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