“Today’s Healthcare is 30% clinical, 20% attitude and 50% Technology.” –Kunal Jain
So today we will talk about the factor that affects 50% of the healthcare industry. Out of 7.7 billion people living on this earth, 1 billion people do not have access to one of the most fundamental human right, Access to healthcare.
Another 100 million are driven into poverty every year just paying for it. There are not enough doctors for people that are getting sick at present. So how can we bring proper medical care to a billion people?
Introduce Technology to Healthcare and you have a good chance of improving the present day scenario. The 39th GITEX Technology Week aims to do the same. Over the last 38 years,
GITEX Dubai has always been a pioneering event that has a major stake in the technological advancements that we are seeing today.
Talk about the potential of healthcare startups
Let’s have a detailed look on few of the technologies and healthcare startup ideas that will change the future of healthcare for good.
AR/VR in Healthcare
Misreading a prescription or medical terminology can be very dangerous for a patient. So having a centralized database where each patient’s real-time data can be accessed by doctors and nurses at any time using AR headsets and expert surgeons can guide other doctors across the world via a VR headset and view the situation of the patient from the attending doctor’s perspective.
Medical students training to become doctors can use AR/VR kits to learn human anatomy lessons and practice surgeries in a virtual environment before going for real practice tests. It’s a great tragedy that in modern times also many lives are lost just because the patient couldn’t get access to a better surgeon. But not anymore, with virtual reality, the greatest surgical specialists can treat patients all over the world, without ever stepping onto a plane.
“From medicine and post-operative care to psychological and physical rehabilitation,” said Todd Richmond. “Using VAMR (Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality) technologies as a tool for direct treatment, there are broader applications for VAMR in medical and behavioral fields, lowering stress prior to procedures, which will serve to improve the overall patient experience.”
Robotics in Healthcare
Surgeons can perform an operation with the use of a remote-controlled robot. using a head-mounted display and haptic gloves, surgeons could virtually transport themselves to an operating room thousands of miles away, able to use their natural skills through robotics to save lives. Besides surgeons, patients have access to a ton of robotics and enhancements that improve their outer and inner body health and abilities.
Prosthetics, Orthotics, and exoskeletons can improve and enhance human physical forms and support patients who can’t operate their body on their own. Prosthetics work as a supplement for the missing limbs or other body parts that amputees lost in some accident or from birth while orthotics and exoskeletons work with the existing body parts in either holding them straight or improving their functionality.
Till now we talked about robotics used to cure a patient from outside the body. Now we will look at robots so microscopic that they enter the human body to heal it. Surgical robotics, and interventional robotics. These micro-robots are untethered (not physically connected to outer source) devices that can move through the body and can perform a range of functions, such as targeted therapy of organs and muscles, material removals like biopsy or ablation), structural control, and sensing oxygen concentrations, presence of cancer cells, etc.
IoT and Wearables in Healthcare
IoT and Wearables are the top trends of 2019 and will continue to be in hype in near future. There are many amazing uses of IoT and wearables but we would be focusing solely on the medical application of these technologies. Google glasses are a very helpful Wearable tool for doctors, when they are in surgery they can receive all the needed data and reports about the patient like X-ray reports, body vitals, surgical procedure and medical history of the patient.
For patients there are many variations of wearables from wristbands, earphones, eyewear, tech clothing, etc. that will be discussed below. Patients now don’t need to be hooked up to large monitors and machines to check their vitals, a simple bio patch that attaches to the chest can project all the vitals on any screen. All these IoT and wearables are working to monitor and improve different aspects of the health of the wearer.
Let’s learn some of the wearables and healthcare IoT products that will be showcased at the GITEX Technology Week. Lumo Lift is a tiny posture correcting wearable pin that fastens to your clothes and vibrates every time you break the correct posture for your body.
Next up is “smart fabric”. This fabric is able to detect heart rate, respiratory rate, distance traveled and calories burned in real time because sensors are woven directly into the clothes where a heart rate monitor would go. The body vitals can be accessed through a mobile app.
AI in Healthcare
Artificial Intelligence is a disruptive technology that is going to change the face of every industry that it will touch, and there won’t be any industry it won’t have its hands in. Healthcare has some really useful application for AI technology.
One of the biggest work being, to do all the repetitive analysis of tests, X-rays, CT scans, etc. which would be monotonous and error-prone if done by a human on a continuous basis.
Managing medical records is done by modern computers in hospitals but this setup still has a chance of committing some kind of error and an error in managing medical records or prescriptions can become a matter of life and death. As mentioned earlier there are not enough medical reps as there are patients, hence many emergency cases also have to wait for hours before a doctor can get to them.
In such situation having a virtual nurse attend to normal cases can save a lot of time that doctors can give to more serious medical cases.
Developing a single pharmaceutical drug through clinical trials can take years and can sometimes cost billions of dollars.
Making this process cheaper and faster could change the world. A program powered by AI technology found two medications that could reduce Ebola infectivity in one day when analysis of this type generally takes months or years – a difference that could mean saving thousands of lives.
Healthcare Apps for Patients
The smartest and most powerful device that people possess is the smartphone so how can this blog about technology and its impact on Healthcare sector finish without mentioning the mighty “Smartphone” and the latest healthcare mobile app trends.
How many of you wish that you can contact your doctor via a Healthcare app for patients or discuss your symptoms on a chatting app like WhatsApp?
There are various mobile health apps for patients that are portals similar to chatting apps where doctors and patients can interact about the ailment.
Such portals only cost a fraction of the visiting fees that normally doctors charge.
Many times patients have to take many medical tests before their doctor can decide on the ailment, there are EveryWell and many other Healthcare apps for Android and iOS that understand the difficulty of a patient to physically go to test centers for such tests. So if you book a checkup like cholesterol test, food sensitivity test, fertility test, etc. the company brings the test to your home where it can be done at your bedside.
There are also some top mobile health apps for mental health care where patients can talk to licensed therapists about their mental health and can attend therapy sessions online. Therapists are individually matched based on their specialties and your needs before you begin your sessions.
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Conclusion
There are many amazing advancements waiting for Healthcare at the GITEX Technology Week. If you are an entrepreneur with a brilliant idea that could change the healthcare sector or are an investor looking for such ideas to invest in then GITEX Dubai is the place to be.
