People often say how it is the military industrial complex that has driven most of the tech innovations we’ve later come to enjoy in our everyday life. There is some truth to that, however, the military is far from the only industry that drives technology forward.
For millennia, healthcare has been one of the main drivers of scientific and technological innovations, and this very much continues to be the case today. And, with recent technological advancements happening faster than ever, tech in healthcare is becoming so pronounced that hospital and other healthcare facilities have to upgrade and/or add to their technological and software arsenal on an yearly basis to stay competitive and to offer the best possible services to their patients.
So, what are some of the most pronounced and promising tech innovations and trends that are not only shaping up today’s healthcare landscape but are set to do so even more dramatically in the near future?
1. Digital tools for better patient experience
Some of the chief complaints patients today have aren’t so much with the quality of the healthcare treatments but with the quality and prices of the overall healthcare experience. This includes the often ballooning prices of services and the lack of personalization, choice, expedience in the healthcare field.
The various emerging digital tools are expected to drastically improve this and give patients more channels and freedom in choosing which healthcare provider to visit, how costly the administrative service is going to be and how quickly the whole process unfolds.
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Most people today may associate AI with image or text generators online, but it has lots of actually serious and useful applications too. AI tools have already started being used in healthcare – AI tools help with medical imaging, AI-guided surgery tools that offer guided images, and there are also AI tools that help physicians crunch past data sets to look for early disease symptoms, thus reducing both false positives and false negatives diagnostics in many fields.
All these trends are set to continue to develop and AI will likely become not just a much larger but an integral part of the medical field in the very near future.
3. Healthcare online marketplaces
Healthcare marketplaces are also very much a thing today and they offer both more choice to patients and more collaboration and innovation opportunities for companies and medical professionals.
Such online marketplaces are set to increase even more drastically in the coming years, however, with apps, software, and devices becoming even more integral in this niche. Open-source integration is very much expected to step up with more and more companies collaborating to create digital and healthcare solutions more easily.
For patients, such healthcare marketplaces are expected to also bring an even easier access to healthcare services at the click of a button – as easily as it is to use social media or find a date on a site like Hily.
4. Hand-held medical devices
Like most other technologies, healthcare hardware is also benefiting from the fact that it can be made smaller and more compact. This isn’t just a “space-saving” benefit, however, but it makes many healthcare devices much more easily delivered to remote locations, more practical to bring on home visits, to have in a mobile clinic, and so on.
This also makes medical devices much easier to mass-produce and more accessible at more places, thus reducing wait times. With this trend continuing to develop, many healthcare services that, up until very recently, had wait times of several months and required traveling and lots of expenses, will soon be a matter of just one quick visit to your nearest physician.
5. Virtual doctor appointments
Virtual appointments or telemedicine isn’t quite where it should be yet, as in-person visits are still invaluable. The COVID-19 pandemic did accelerate the development of this field a lot, however, and showed why reliable remote diagnostics and treatments should be developed as soon as possible.
With more and more apps and digital diagnostic tools being developed, we will hopefully see telemedicine improve to the point of being fully reliable and effective in the matter of a few short years.
This likely won’t ever eliminate the need for in-person visits, especially for some medical problems. However, even if just a fraction of the various common health problems people experience can soon be dealt with remotely, this will greatly reduce the strain on the healthcare system and help it function much more smoothly and effectively.
Much of this is still a subject of speculation, of course. However, all of the above trends are ones we are already seeing development in and thinks are indeed looking promising.
{Categories} _Category: Takes{/Categories}
{URL}https://techbullion.com/tech-innovations-shaping-the-future-of-healthcare/{/URL}
{Author}Angela Scott-Briggs{/Author}
{Image}https://techbullion.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/healthcare-tech-innovation-1000×600.jpg{/Image}
{Keywords}HealthTech,Healthcare,Innovations,tech{/Keywords}
{Source}POV{/Source}
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