By Peter Ianace, Chief Operating Officer of VitalTech
It took a global pandemic to finally visualize what comprehensive digital hospital care could become.
Telehealth, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and cloud-based Virtual Care Platforms have experienced a trial by fire, resulting in hardened steel of resolve to implement integrated digital health care that will touch far more aspects of our health care services than we realize.
(They) have experienced a trial by fire, resulting in hardened steel of resolve to implement integrated digital health care that will touch far more aspects of our health care services than we realize.
The result? We’re on the precipice of a complete and total virtualization of hospital care—a turnkey way in which society may interact with health care providers and services in the future. The framework is already in place. What remains is full-scale trial and adoption by patients. The end game that awaits will improve patient outcomes, lower health care costs for providers and patients alike, and enhance quality of life across the care continuum.
Let’s look at a few critical areas that make up the future of digital hospital care:
Telehealth – the advent of multi-party video conferencing between health care providers and patients has brought about virtual office visits, with surveys revealing that over 60% of the population prefer this option to an in-person office exam.
RPM – now proven to be a savior amidst the pandemic, remote patient monitoring allowed providers to deescalate the strain on resources, while patients recovered in the comfort of their own homes.
Telemedicine – it’s now possible to conduct teleradiology, and telemetry all using virtual care platforms that integrate into a patient’s electronic medical record files. Yet, a comprehensive digital hospital care environment using the tenets of virtual care solutions would be missing a critical benefit if the data being collected isn’t put to use to enhance population health. Analytics, wellness tools and the social determinants of health—predictive analysis—can be put to use in increasing the capacity of beneficial outcomes for the general population. And one day will even be measurable on a global scale.
The value proposition of digital hospital care through virtual platforms is evident and stands ready to take health care providers to places they only could have imagined, just a few short years ago.
–Peter Ianace
