In the age of digital transformation, the ability to harness video and audio communication technologies has revolutionized various sectors, including healthcare. For rural and remote communities, these advancements have become a beacon of hope in addressing health disparities caused by geographical barriers. By leveraging the internet’s power, telehealth – the provision of healthcare remotely via telecommunications technology–has been instrumental in overcoming these barriers, allowing patients to receive medical services without the need for physical travel.

Companies like Dogtown Media, a leading medical app development company, are at the forefront of these advancements. With their expertise in creating telehealth applications, they’re enabling more robust and flexible ways of providing healthcare services remotely. Let’s discuss how.

The Benefits of Using Audio and Video Technology to Deliver Health Services in Rural and Remote Areas

The use of audio and video technology in the delivery of health services, also known as telehealth, has opened up a myriad of benefits for patients in rural and remote areas. These benefits, ranging from improved accessibility to cost savings, have a significant impact on patients’ lives and the overall healthcare system.

Promoting Accessibility and Convenience

One of the most significant advantages of telehealth is its ability to promote accessibility and convenience. For rural and remote patients, distance, travel time, and costs can often pose a considerable challenge in accessing healthcare. Video and audio communication technologies circumvent these issues, allowing patients to consult with healthcare providers from the comfort of their homes. This not only enhances the convenience of accessing healthcare but also enables timely medical interventions, particularly crucial for those with chronic conditions or those who may need immediate attention.

Improving Patient Outcomes

By reducing the barriers to accessing healthcare, telehealth has also demonstrated its potential to improve patient outcomes. Studies have shown that continuous patient monitoring and frequent virtual consultations can lead to better disease management and improved health outcomes. Moreover, telehealth services can enable prompt medical intervention, which can be life-saving in critical situations.

Reducing Healthcare Costs

Cost savings are another notable benefit of using audio and video technology in healthcare. By eliminating travel costs and reducing the need for hospital admissions through proactive management of health conditions, telehealth can significantly decrease healthcare expenses for patients. Furthermore, it allows healthcare providers to optimize their services and resources, contributing to overall cost efficiency within the healthcare system. These savings can then be redirected to enhance patient care services, fostering an environment of sustainable healthcare provision in rural and remote areas.

What Types of Services Have Proven to be Effective in Rural Areas?

In the scope of telehealth, several services have demonstrated effectiveness in improving healthcare access and outcomes for rural communities. These services utilize the flexibility and convenience of video and audio communication technologies to offer personalized healthcare solutions that cater to the specific needs of rural and remote patients.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is a form of telehealth where medical professionals use digital technologies to track a patient’s health data remotely. This service is particularly beneficial for patients with chronic diseases like diabetes or heart conditions, as it enables healthcare providers to continuously monitor vital signs and symptoms, making it easier to manage these conditions and prevent hospitalizations. By catching potential issues early, RPM can improve health outcomes and even save lives.

Virtual Consultations and Diagnoses

Virtual consultations and diagnoses are another critical service in rural telehealth. These services enable patients to consult with healthcare providers via video or audio calls, eliminating the need for physical travel. Moreover, virtual consultations have proven effective in diagnosing a range of conditions, from skin disorders to respiratory illnesses. The ability to access professional medical advice from home increases the likelihood of early detection and treatment, leading to better patient outcomes.

Mental Health Services

Access to mental health services is often limited in rural areas due to a lack of specialized providers. Telehealth bridges this gap by offering teletherapy or telepsychiatry services. Patients can connect with therapists and psychiatrists through video calls, allowing for real-time interaction and treatment. Studies show that teletherapy can be as effective as in-person therapy, making it a promising solution for mental healthcare access in remote regions.

Post-Operative and Chronic Disease Management

Managing post-operative care and chronic diseases is a significant challenge for patients living far from healthcare facilities. Telehealth services provide an effective solution by offering remote post-operative check-ups and continuous management for chronic diseases. This includes medication management, routine follow-ups, and health education. Not only does this minimize the risk of complications and readmissions, but it also empowers patients to take charge of their health, thereby enhancing their quality of life.

By integrating these services into the healthcare system, telehealth can significantly enhance healthcare delivery, especially in rural and remote areas where access to quality healthcare is often challenging. The possibilities are endless as technology continues to evolve, bringing about a promising future for healthcare delivery in these regions.

Challenges for Telehealth in Remote Areas

While telehealth offers numerous advantages for rural healthcare, it is not without its challenges. Several obstacles need to be overcome to fully realize the potential of this technology.

Technology and Infrastructure Challenges

One of the significant barriers in remote areas is the lack of robust internet infrastructure. Slow or unstable internet can hinder the effectiveness of video consultations or real-time data monitoring. Additionally, not all patients may have access to the necessary devices or technical skills to use telehealth services, creating a barrier to its adoption.

Lack of Training or Experience in Telehealth among Healthcare Providers

Telehealth requires a new set of skills from healthcare providers. They need to navigate different technologies, manage virtual patient interactions, and interpret remote data. This transition can be challenging, particularly for those not familiar with digital technologies.

Privacy and Security Concerns

Data privacy and security are also significant concerns in telehealth. Transmitting sensitive health information over the internet poses a risk of data breaches, which could compromise patient privacy. There is a need for stringent security measures and protocols to ensure the secure transmission and storage of patient data.

Addressing these challenges is critical to making telehealth a truly viable solution for rural and remote healthcare delivery.

Future Perspectives: Opportunities and Predictions for Telehealth in Rural Areas

Looking forward, telehealth in rural areas presents an array of exciting opportunities. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see the development of more sophisticated tools for remote patient monitoring, diagnostic technologies, and digital therapeutic interventions. These advances will likely make telehealth even more efficient, accessible, and effective, potentially transforming rural healthcare delivery.

AI-powered diagnostic tools and health tracking applications are already showing promise, and their further refinement and integration into telehealth platforms will likely improve patient outcomes. Moreover, advancements in wearable technologies could augment remote patient monitoring, providing healthcare providers with a more comprehensive view of their patients’ health.

Meanwhile, ongoing improvements in digital infrastructure, such as the roll-out of 5G and satellite internet services, could alleviate some of the connectivity issues in remote areas. This development will make telehealth services more reliable and accessible for a broader range of rural patients.

The future of telehealth in rural areas is bright, and it is poised to play an increasingly integral role in healthcare delivery. While challenges remain, the potential benefits for patients in terms of accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and improved health outcomes are substantial and compelling. Telehealth represents a critical area for continued focus, innovation, and investment in the years to come.

These processes are a perfect fit for the Internet of Things (IoT), which can help with untangling complex supply chains and keeping track of chemical processes without a loss in efficiency or quality of drugs. In comparable industries, like chemical manufacturing, these operations are being phased out in favor of IoT applications that simplify and streamline many of the tedious tasks involved in each process.

The Numerous Challenges of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Manufacturing relies on time and continuity for maximum efficiency. But in the pharmaceutical industry, things aren’t so cut and dry. Drugs are usually developed in large batches, involving mixing compounds in large vats. Upon mixing, the product needs to sit for a while to measure the quality of intermediate products. This can cause delays across the entire company.

After the new chemical compound is measured for its quality, it moves to another step, which can sometimes involve another facility. Because of the timeline and amount of floor space required for each drug’s development, machinery isn’t used continuously. And information and data about the quality, status, and condition of the chemical compound are often stored and distributed through a variety of systems. Many companies still record and store data on paper.

For manufacturing to be optimized for maximum output and efficiency, machinery needs to be used continuously. This means planning ahead, even by years, to experience the biggest cost savings. This is how it’s done across a variety of industries, and pharmaceutical companies need to catch up.

IoT technology is a perfect match for these business and processes problems, and it offers more flexibility, transparency, and return on investment than anything else on the market. But the road to modernizing the pharmaceutical industry’s manufacturing processes is a very rocky one.

Navigating Necessary Regulations

The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated due to the life-or-death consequences of its products. When regulations need to be considered, lengthy delays usually follow. For example, to submit a drug for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you’re required to submit detailed paperwork of every single part about the drug’s manufacturing process.

This includes the active compound, the manufacturing process, and even the layout of the chemical plant. If there any changes to be made in the process, it first requires direct approval from the regulatory committee along with some paperwork. Because of these regulatory hurdles, pharmaceutical companies require much more planning of their experiments and drug development.

To help cut down the time it takes to navigate regulations and receive approval, the FDA started the Emerging Technology Team (ETT). The ETT’s goal is to encourage new manufacturing methods, like continuous manufacturing. This enables pharmaceutical companies to submit their ideas before submitting the regulatory paperwork

IoT and Compliance

The FDA isn’t the first regulatory body to improve drug development. In fact, more than 100 such agencies exist across the world, and they all require their own paperwork, which can be a major timesink for global pharmaceutical companies. The ETT has made positive change and growth for the pharmaceutical industry, however.

Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals has been using continuous manufacturing for their cystic fibrosis drug, Orkambi, since 2015. In 2016, Janssen Pharmaceuticals switched over to continuous manufacturing for their HIV drug, Prezista. Both companies worked closely with the FDA to ensure approval of the modern manufacturing process before they submitted their drug approval paperwork. According to Johnson & Johnson, separating testing and sampling using IoT sensors afforded the company a significant improvement over their previous methods.

By combining medical applications with IoT, pharmaceutical companies can remotely monitor and document every step, variation, and concentration during each part of the manufacturing process. The best part is that they can do everything in real-time, enabling plant operators, researchers, and chemists to know what’s happening during the entire process. Companies can also track drugs for recalls if a specific chemical poses a problem for consumers.

Pharmaceutical supply chains are complex and finicky. Often, a reliable chemical supplier can lose their inventory overnight, causing global problems in drug manufacturing. With IoT, pharmaceutical companies can monitor and document the activity of their contract manufacturing organizations, which are hired to complete much of the manufacturing of the drug.

Additionally, pharmaceutical companies often use different suppliers and vendors to manufacture the active ingredient, formulate new drugs, and package the medication. Regulatory bodies want to monitor, track, and report on each company’s vendors, and IoT can deliver everything in a nice wrapped-up package with a bow.

The Future of Pharma

We need pharmaceutical companies to survive, but we can lower drug prices and the cost to research and develop new medications by introducing IoT technology into the current outdated manufacturing processes. Above all, pharmaceutical companies need to maintain a strict level of high quality in their drugs. Currently, if a drug has possible quality issues, it’s treated as spoiled. But with IoT, tracking down chemical sources will be easier so that action can be taken quickly.

As pharmaceutical equipment tends to be expensive and labor-intensive to produce, continuous manufacturing is even more necessary to improve drug development. And although continuous manufacturing saves a lot of time and resources, it can cause major disruptions in manufacturing from equipment failure. As a result, IoT sensor data, real-time asset management, and preventative maintenance will become bigger priorities.

Telehealth has changed how we treat and care for those who have medical maladies and are vulnerable. The latest innovations in this field are enabling people to live safer, fuller lives without the need for constant human supervision. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear; more healthcare facilities than ever before are embracing telemedicine in an effort to keep patients from in-person appointments that risk exposure to the deadly virus.

Recent telehealth innovations such as wearables heavily rely on the Internet of Things. With this technological paradigm, we can securely transmit and analyze data in order to unearth life-improving care plans. These capabilities allow aging populations to continue to live in their own homes while reducing the burden that many care facilities are experiencing at the moment. In this post, we’ll examine the benefits of furthering telehealth connectivity innovation and the factors needed to make it happen.

Enabling Patient Independence

Good connectivity is essential for three types of telehealth monitoring: passive, active, and condition.

Passive monitoring deals with medical applications and technologies in the patient’s home that quietly monitor his or her behavior. These devices usually only initiate action if they notice something concerning. For instance, the Alcuris Memo Hub connects a variety of smart devices around a patient’s home, like a tea kettle, TV, and lighting. If this platform notices a change in the patient’s typical pattern of behavior, it will issue an alert. It can also observe and trigger an alert for gradual changes that may indicate a revision to a health regimen is required.

Active monitoring entails devices such as panic buttons and two-way intercoms. In summation, these devices require proactive action, either from the patient or a caretaker.

Lastly, as its name implies, condition monitoring involves the monitoring of specific health conditions. It combines aspects of the first two approaches we’ve discussed with detailed health data, like blood pressure, heart rate, and movement.

Simplicity Is Essential

Digital health innovations help improve the quality of life for aging populations as well as patients living with chronic conditions and disabilities. They also help lower the costs and resources needed for adequate healthcare delivery for these cases.

Ensuring that telehealth devices have enough connectivity to reliably capture, share, and analyze data is absolutely necessary. Without proper connectivity, wrong conclusions (and consequently, outcomes) could be reached. But these connected devices need one more feature to take telehealth to the next level: the ability to work right out of the box.

Telehealth device manufacturers should configure their devices to seamlessly connect to a healthcare provider’s system seamlessly without any complexities. They should also be able to work anywhere, whether that’s Beijing or Los Angeles. Making telehealth devices and platforms plug-and-play is imperative since a large portion of their audience may not be tech-savvy or have the time to set up complicated systems.

Overcoming Connectivity Obstacles

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, chances are good that you have some experience with mobile phones. This means you’re also painfully familiar with the occurrence of black spots where your mobile device can’t receive a strong, reliable signal. Can you imagine this conundrum for a device that your life depends on?

When a patient’s life is on the line, we cannot compromise on connectivity. To mitigate this issue, telehealth devices should be capable of selecting the best network based on its location and even change between networks to minimize drop-out time. During a critical moment, a dropped connection can mean the difference between life and death. So any device in the telehealth market should offer strong, reliable, and continuous connectivity.

To ensure optimal connectivity, medical device makers must consider its importance from the start of the design process. This often translates to a few common factors for the device. For example, it must be lightweight, easy to operate, robust, and unobtrusive. Often, these elements restrict the design of these devices, which is something that manufacturers may have not dealt with before if they previously focused on larger or fixed devices.

On top of this, manufacturers must also think through what occurs at the back end of their telehealth devices. Do they connect to a cloud service through which analyses are run? Or is the data being transmitted to another human who needs convenient access to it? In this case, how should the information be presented? Alongside connectivity, this focus on communication must also be considered at the beginning of the design stage.

Don’t Forget Security

End-to-end security is always crucial for anything that handles sensitive data such as telehealth devices. Whether it’s your hardware or software, all of your connectivity platforms must be secured properly in order for your device to work effectively.

Unfortunately, several consumer SIMs lack advanced security protocols. They actually send data over standard internet channels, which increases the risk of this information being stolen or lost. To mitigate this, prioritize security early on in the device design phase.

Numerous IoT manufacturers treat device security as an afterthought. As we know from the IoT industry’s track record with data breaches, this has not worked out well. The same mistakes cannot be made when it comes to the personal data of patients.

Dedicated end-to-end security solutions are usually the best for telehealth devices. This involves measures such as data encryption at the device level, communication through trusted private networks and secure gateways, authentication, and authorization.

If you want to take things a step further (which is never a bad idea), add in data flow monitoring tools to detect any unusual activity. These could be your first indicators of a malicious attack taking place. Lastly, consider consulting a third-party pen tester before deployment.

Are You Ready for the Future of Telehealth?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of how connectivity can help accelerate telehealth innovation. It may not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think of new capabilities in digital medicine, but it’s certainly among the most important. By emphasizing connectivity during the design of a telehealth device, you’re able to give patients and providers more peace of mind and unlock better outcomes for both parties.

Have you had any unusual experiences with telehealth connectivity? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Telehealth is one technology that emerged during the pandemic that experts expect to stick around after we’ve all gotten our vaccines. But, despite what most think it entails, telemedicine doesn’t just mean a simple Zoom or FaceTime video call. With new telehealth platforms, doctors can now store and pull up bloodwork, test results, MRIs, x-rays, and medical history all while video chatting with you.

These platforms allow for a two-way communication flow between the provider and patient, as the patient can become engaged in their own care by sharing information through the platform. Patients can also approve access to their medical chart for other providers and hospitals, which saves time and effort for everyone, especially the patient. Whether or not it’s your first time interacting with your doctor on a telemedicine platform, here are five ways you can optimize your telehealth appointment to take maximum advantage of your doctor’s time and knowledge.

#1: Set Up Early

Patients might be too sick or tired to go through all of the steps in setting up a new online account or activating a new account. But it’s imperative that you take the proper steps to ensure that you’re set up and ready to go well before your appointment time. If you try to get set up at the last minute, you may cause a delay in starting your appointment, and your provider could even have you reschedule if you don’t make it to the conference within a reasonable amount of time. If you’re really sick, it may be disastrous to your physical and mental health to have to wait another few weeks for another appointment.

Many hospitals and private practices use well-known and popular medical portals like MyChart or San Francisco-based BlueJeans. Because of the recent growth of telemedicine, however, most patients will not have an account on one of these platforms. Before the appointment, check and verify the password is working, you’ve got the necessary software downloaded, and that things look like they are yours. Many providers encourage their patients by telling them that it may feel overwhelming to set up a new account, but that it’s really very easy to do.

#2: Share Medical Images Early

Speaking of getting things set up early, if you know you want to show your doctor medical images from your last scan, get a copy of your images before the visit. If the copy is a physical copy, have the copy sent to your provider’s office. It’s best to just ask your radiologist for a copy of the files before you leave their office, but it’s easy to forget this step when you’re eager to get back home or back to work.

Some offices use technology like Patient Connect, created by medical development company LifeImage. It sends patients a link where they can upload their images directly from their local computer. And if you’re facing a problem that prevents you from sharing your medical images, call your doctor and let them know about the situation. They’ll figure out how to get your images on your behalf so that you’re ready to go for your upcoming appointment.

#3: Round Up Your Records

While you’re hunting down your medical images, make sure your medical chart is up to date. If you’ve visited any specialists recently or had a hospital visit, ask them for their notes. Providers often need documented reasons to see patients, and these notes will help them prepare for the appointment as well as bolster evidence of your condition or illness.

Preparing these records ahead of time can also prevent your provider from canceling your appointment or refusing to give you medication. Try to do some due diligence in updating your medical records for your current provider to see.

#4: Fill Out Your Contacts Early

After you update your medical chart, head over to the contacts section and fill it out to the best of your ability. It can be your best friend or a family member. C0ntacts can also be other doctors you see for other medical reasons. Having a list of this information helps providers reach someone for context and questions if you can’t be reached. The data gathered from your contact list can save your life during surgery or during prescription writing.

#5: Be Truthful About Your Medical History

It’s easy to reframe your medical history in a way that wouldn’t garner too much judgment: leave out a lot of details. But doctors and nurses have heard everything under the sun (and then some), so don’t be afraid to tell the truth about all of your lifestyle habits, medical history, and medications. Withholding this information could result in death, but sharing the information could help your provider find the missing piece of the puzzle. It also saves time because it prevents canceled surgeries, drug interactions, and confusing labwork results.

Above All Else, Show Up

Dr. David Shapiro, an orthopedic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, says his team once met with a patient over telehealth who was in a fast-food drive-thru. This is unprofessional and can cause issues with your doctor being able to hear and understand you. When you show up to your appointment, be ready to ask questions, answer questions, and pay full attention to your appointment.

These days, online healthcare is not just for young people or tech-savvy patients. Dr. Shapiro says that his team hasn’t found any age limitations to telemedicine. Telehealth is reducing barriers to medical care and healthcare access, and it’s easier to check-in and be seen by the doctor than you’d think.

Have you had a telehealth appointment? Were there any technical issues? Did your appointment go well or did you feel disconnected from your provider? Let us know in the comments below!

But there’s more in store for 2021, namely all kinds of interesting new technologies being added to the hardware and software of wearables devices. Here’s what features and devices we’re looking forward to seeing launch this upcoming year.

1. SpO2 Monitoring

Because of the pandemic, the SpO2 sensor has become one of the in-demand features of any smartwatch. Almost every new smartwatch that shipped in 2020 had a SpO2 sensor. But the efficacy of the data has repeatedly come into question by medical professionals, device wearers, and the companies themselves.

Watches with SpO2 sensors often come with a disclaimer that the sensor is only for fitness and wellness. In other words, these sensors don’t offer medical advice, although you can monitor your SpO2 levels to figure out if a doctor’s appointment is warranted. One issue that the SpO2 sensors can alert a user to is the possibility of sleep apnea. However, some wearables don’t use the SpO2 sensor automatically, making it a nearly useless feature.

In 2021, SpO2 data is expected to start being utilized more deeply, especially for health monitoring, early COVID-19 detection, and other respiratory illnesses. In fact, San Francisco-based Fitbit recently released a study that links data from devices’ SpO2 sensors to early signs of respiratory infection, including COVID-19.

2. Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking has been a major hit for all wearables devices. In Apple Watch devices, sleep tracking involved downloading a third-party app. In watchOS 7, the major added feature was native sleep tracking, which more closely aligns the wearable with Fitbit’s offering.

With the new sleep tracking feature, Apple Watch users can check sleep consistency, set sleep schedules, and focus on time spent asleep and awake in bed. Since the feature just launched, the visualizations are lacking compared to Fitbit and Garmin. Although it’s not known what improvements watchOS 8 will bring, experts are certain that watchOS 8 will be released sometime this year.

One thing is for sure: Apple is going to put its own spin on sleep tracking, whether that means a sleep ring, goals for sleep consistency, or more cognizant sleep schedule tracking. These small changes can help users prioritize sleep as an aspect of health and fitness, rather than viewing sleep as a necessity that doesn’t need any optimization.

3. Body Temperature TrackingBody temperature is a difficult vital to measure, but Fitbit managed to accomplish it. Temperature tracking will remain important in 2021 since it’s an early COVID-19 symptom, so the other wearables manufacturers are expected to follow suit this year. Changes in basal temperature hold a lot of value: they can indicate the start of menstruation, signs of illness, or the beginning of a fever.

Huami’s Amazfit GTR 2e and GTS 2e watches have temperature tracking already, leaving Apple and Samsung behind in offering this feature. This is one feature that users will never ignore, empowering them to get help earlier than they normally would.

4. Your Personal Trainer In a Watch

One of the most utilized features in smartwatches is exercising tracking. The sports watch manufacturers, like Polar and Garmin, work for swimming, bike riding, running, and indoor workouts. With the amount of data collected during each workout, making that data accessible and actionable is the next step for wearables in 2021.

Garmin and Polar are also monitoring sleep and heart rate, tying daily activity levels to other aspects of health and wellness. In addition to Garmin’s acquisition of heart analytics company Firstbeat, Polar’s FitSpark feature dives deep into looking at training data to give insights about how to train moving forward as well as give recommendations about what trainings to incorporate into your next workout.

The notion that a smartwatch can be a digital personal trainer has been an ultimate goal of wearables developers, and we’re inching closer to it every day.

5. ECG and Blood Pressure

Apple led the way when it introduced ECG examining in its Apple Watches. To remain competitive, Samsung also added ECG sensors to its Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 and Galaxy Watch 3. One of the hurdles these companies had to overcome is regulatory approval. Additionally, this feature is incredibly complex, so development time is extended for the company. ECG support has been approved in South Korea and the U.S., but other countries are expected to grant approval in 2021 as well.

Blood pressure support is still a unique selling point for smartwatches, and Samsung is leading the way. The company approaches blood pressure monitoring by inserting a dedicated blood pressure monitor that requires some calibration before use. This feature has only been approved in South Korea, but as demand for this feature grows from Samsung users around the world, we expect that more countries will approve blood pressure monitoring in 2021.

The Year of Wearables

Wearables are staying strong in market presence and user engagement. As more people purchase smartwatches in 2021, we expect wearables manufacturers to add more features to stay competitive with each other. This may be the year that wearables go from being nice-to-have devices to becoming need-to-have tools for your health and fitness tracking.

Do you have a wearable that you use for fitness and health monitoring? Do you think the current features are enough or do you want to see more measurements on your wrist in 2021?

Telehealth has transformed during COVID-19. Although it once was a nice-to-have option not available at most doctors’ offices, the virtual conferencing technology has become indispensable for patients avoiding an infection risk. Now, telehealth and virtual services are available at most practices in America.

Many patients and providers are happy with this setup, indicating that it may continue beyond the pandemic. Based on demand, we’re seeing a shift from tele-urgent care to telehealth used for managing chronic illnesses. While telehealth looks like it’s here to stay, medical developers and experts are cautioning healthcare providers and telehealth platforms alike to analyze and improve the quality of this paradigm.

Meeting Demand While Maintaining Quality

Patient outcomes are impacted by healthcare quality. Since telehealth is growing in popularity at unprecedented levels, it’s unclear whether in-person measurements of quality translate to telemedicine. After all, a doctor who delivers amazing care in person may not be the best virtual doctor due to lacking technology experience and slow or unstable Internet connections.

As telehealth expands, we must adopt quality measurements related to equity, accessibility, and transparency. For example, telemedicine cannot be equitable when patients have limited access to smartphone technology or Wi-Fi. Telehealth platforms may not be accessible for patients who have low digital literacy. And for patients with hearing and vision impairments, telehealth is neither accessible nor equitable.

At the University of California San Francisco primary care clinics, there was an increase of more than 4,000% in the utilization of virtual services. But when researchers dived deeper, they found out that many patients who visited the clinic in-person before the pandemic were not accessing medical care through telemedicine avenues. These patients mostly fell into non-English speaking, elderly, and Medicaid groups.

Reviewing multiple published studies and research shows that telemedicine quality is not yet being evaluated rigorously or in a standardized manner. Other than the three measurements we just listed, there should be other measures of quality for telehealth providers and platforms, like unplanned ER visits, diagnostic accuracy, no-show data, patient satisfaction, medication adherence, and successful patient outcomes. The National Quality Forum Telehealth Framework and American Telemedicine Association are working on developing telehealth guidelines, but things aren’t moving fast enough to meet the demand and expansion of telemedicine technology.

Transparency for Patients

Patients already lack access to quality metrics about their provider. They usually use web-based reviews to find a physician, which have been shown to be faulty indicators of quality. And it often doesn’t matter what the patient finds in their web search as most highly-rated physicians and medical groups are booked up for months from now. Sometimes, the highly-praised provider doesn’t have availability until a year from now.

To help chip away at the problem, several companies are developing algorithms that predict quality based on historical data. An algorithm developed by Grand Rounds Inc., for instance, analyzes a provider’s quality based on measurements specific to their specialty. As an example, primary care physicians are evaluated by the algorithm according to their specialty referrals, patterns of prescribing pain medication, preventative screenings and check-ups, and skill in developing a long-term relationship with their patients.

These measurements were independently validated by Harvard researchers as helping to effectively predict the quality of the provider. But the patient, i.e. the party who needs this information the most, doesn’t get access to this information when performing a web search. We can change that with the implementation of quality measurements for telehealth providers by prioritizing transparency for patients. If we can shift the data that we allow patients to access, we can greatly improve equity and accessibility to quality care.

What We Can Do

The first step we need to take immediately is to standardize quality measurements. Because telehealth is here to stay, it’s imperative that we address this topic urgently as in-person care is going to remain impacted by the pandemic and throughout vaccination roll-outs.

After we identify the main quality metrics, we need to ensure that the data is easily accessible and available to patients, providers, and health systems. As we move through this process, the goal should become helping consumers vet and choose a telehealth provider while giving providers feedback for continuous improvement of medical practice and processes.

In addition to transparency, equity and accessibility should be prioritized. Practices should run analyses of their pre-pandemic in-person patients’ demographics as well as of telehealth patients’ demographics. These two analyses should be compared for any obvious changes in patient income, living situation, and race.

Providers should ask many questions, chief among them: “Are there certain populations not using telehealth?”, “What assistance can be given to patients in these groups to improve accessibility and usability?”, and “Who would benefit from using telehealth more often?”

Now is the time for a team effort from a multitude of organizations like academia, telehealth platforms, federal agencies, and healthcare systems to develop a set of measurable goals and metrics that can be used as telehealth continues to grow. Clinical societies, like the American Medical Association, should create guidelines for best practices for telemedicine by specialty. And medical schools should be training future doctors that are comfortable with triaging, examining, and diagnosing patients in a virtual platform.

Workings Towards Better Telehealth for Tomorrow

By working to build robust guidelines and measurements for telehealth today, we can secure a better and more equitable, transparent, and accessible future for every patient. As the saying goes, “sooner rather than later” is necessary for healthcare to maintain quality for patients and providers. Without these issues ironed out, we may see smaller problems become amplified in the next few months and years.

So where do we draw the line on how deep we let the AI technology go in our healthcare system? And can we fully trust the results that come out of an AI’s calculations, especially since those calculations are black-boxed (hidden) from those who are interested in learning the reasons behind the AI’s final decision? A few months ago, academics debated these questions against developers from Google Health.

The Root Problem

AI-enabled medical applications, like those we mentioned earlier, span a variety of fields and disciplines, from academia to industry enterprises like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Everyone involved has different incentives, ideas for the future, and thoughts about where the technology stands today. The two sides engaged in a heated discussion in Nature, one of the most well-known science journals. The two sides included AI researchers from the University of Toronto, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Harvard, and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PMCC), as well as researchers from Google Health.

It began when Google Health published a study about their AI’s phenomenal results in screening for breast cancer. The company said that its AI vastly outperformed professional radiologists in finding and diagnosing breast cancer. It also added that this technology could be generalized beyond training populations, which is a very confident statement, given that large datasets of high-quality medical images are incredibly rare.

The academics argued that the study was non-replicable, which is a must for published studies so that other researchers can help bolster the claim or warn others that the authors are just blowing hot air. Google Health didn’t include sufficient descriptions about its model and code, requiring readers to blindly trust the results and model’s performance. Google Health’s rebuttal stated that they couldn’t release that information in order to protect patients and the AI.

In science, discourse like this is necessary to push the boundaries of ethics, morality, and regulations surrounding emerging technologies. When big-name companies and schools argue, even the public takes notice.

Academics’ Arguments

Without a replicable method and enough details, published scientific studies are at risk of losing credibility and trustworthiness. Anyone could publish something, make up stellar results, and get praise and credit from the media. But science is formed in replicated experiments that return the same results, follow-up experiments that explore a slightly different question, and novel ideas on how to apply the study. Thus, in all published studies, you’ll read about the exact number of people used in the research, how they were split up, what technologies and tools were used, what experimental procedures were carried out and when, and much more.

But with AI mixed in, it’s difficult to publish replicable studies. Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains is a senior scientist at the Toronto-based PMCC. He explains, “In computational research, it’s not yet a widespread criterion for the details of an AI study to be fully accessible. This is detrimental to our progress.” As any developer knows, asking five developers to write code to solve one problem will likely result in five different programs. So without having the exact program, a developer might have a different way of accomplishing the same thing using the very few details he or she knows, which in turn could impact the performance of the AI.

The academics said Google Health’s study is just an example of a major, far-reaching problem. The study lacked transparency and not just for the AI algorithm’s code but for the dataset used for training the algorithm as well. Many medical datasets are under license and can cause patient privacy problems, but that’s not an excuse as datasets can be anonymized. Ultimately, the authors wrote, “such resources can considerably accelerate model development, validation and transition into production and clinical [implementation].”

Google Health’s Rebuttal

Google Health’s team, led by Dr. Scott McKinney, centered around protecting patients and the AI’s code. They also mentioned that regulations require that the AI algorithm remain private, for example, because it could be classified as “medical device software”. Without the proper permissions and regulatory body overseeing the release, developers, patients, and providers can be at risk. Google Health also mentioned that the largest dataset they used is accessibly online by putting in an application to Google. But the other datasets cannot be shared at all.

The Next Big Debate

This is just the start of a series of debates that multiple stakeholders will have over new AI algorithms, their performance, their underlying black box calculations, and the effects on patients and providers. These arguments could rage on for decades, as the line between “right” and “wrong” is still unclear and can vary from stakeholder to stakeholder. One thing is for sure: because this debate was held publicly, it opened up the possibility of hosting these discussions with input from patients. If nothing else, the researchers on both sides piqued the public’s interest in the pitfalls of AI, publishing AI research, and medical experimentation.

Would you trust an AI to diagnose you from your medical scans, or do you prefer a physician to make a decision before looking at what the AI thinks? Let us know in the comments below!

From their inception, it was immediately obvious that wearables had immense potential to improve how we interact with medical apps. These sleek and stylish devices could not only make technology more widely accessible, but they could also allow us to understand our own health in a more intimate, digestible way. Dogtown Media has always striven to keep up and innovate with the latest developments in wearable technology. That’s why we’re so excited and honored to announce that we’ve recognized as a top wearable app developer of 2020 by TopDevelopers.co!

Since we opened our doors in 2011, the wearables market has witnessed unprecedented growth. The explosive popularity of these devices has led to countless advancements which now present endless opportunities for augmenting preventative medicine. With that said, it’s safe to say that the days of viewing wearables as mere fitness trackers are over — this technology can give you a comprehensive picture of your health that wasn’t possible only a few years ago.

Wearables unlock insights that allow anyone to take better control of their health. They can also elucidate better ways for medical experts to manage maladies. It’s no exaggeration to say that these benefits are priceless. But this is really just the beginning; we expect wearables to radically expand in functionality and capability over the next few years.

TopDevelopers.co assessed several wearable app developers to identify the pioneers in this field. Ultimately, they had to drastically cut down their list of candidates to companies that demonstrated not only substantial experience in this field but also a proven track record of consistent client satisfaction. We’re extremely proud that our Los Angeles-based development studio made the cut!

Besides being recognized as a top wearable app developer of 2020, Dogtown Media has also had the pleasure of being featured as one of the best B2B service providers in California by Clutch as well as a leading IoT app developer by TopDevelopers.co!

At a time when it has become painfully clear that more medical innovation is sorely needed, we’re committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with wearable technology. We’d like to extend our thanks to TopDevelopers.co once again for recognizing our work. We’d also like to thank our clients, team, and community — we couldn’t have done it without you!

Who is TopDevelopers.co?

TopDevelopers.co is a widely respected directory and review platform for B2B IT service providers. They take a neutral approach to analyzing companies. The team of analysts at TopDevelopers.co vets organizations through stringent parameters which ensure that only the most competitive firms, businesses, enterprises, and entrepreneurs are filtered through their process. This helps service seekers find the most appropriate solutions for their needs.

But while big data brings a variety of benefits to healthcare organizations, it also comes with a few unique challenges. Let’s delve into both sides of this equation.

The Monumental Benefits of Big Data in Healthcare

Medical data is rich with historical information, and examining a large number of medical records can yield obvious patterns into diseases, treatments, and patient health. Using big data and data science, medical developers can help healthcare providers turn health data into actionable insights. These insights can be vital to patients and their lives, and stakeholders like insurance companies, pharmaceutical enterprises, and healthcare providers benefit too.

Some major benefits include creating comprehensive patient profiles, enhancing the patient experience which leads to higher patient satisfaction, and optimizing hospital administrative workflows. Other benefits include making the healthcare industry more cost-effective, improving medical procedures by increasing efficiency, and finding patterns in treatment outcomes almost instantly. Patients can expect a more personalized approach to care, more accessible electronic health records (EHRs), and higher levels of engagement from their providers.

For the industry overall, there will be a major lift in productivity, efficiency, and quality of health services. And over time, the cost of analytics and data servers is expected to decrease while speed and capacity increase. Data science in healthcare creates a holistic profile of the patient in real-time while processing new information like diagnoses, lab results, medications, demographics, and procedures.

With such data collected from various sources, health systems can better analyze trends, predict outbreaks, and develop targeted interventions. The abundance of health-related data facilitates the identification of risk factors, early detection of diseases, and improved treatment plans as well as public health surveillance. By collecting data on a large scale, researchers and healthcare professionals can gain valuable insights that would be otherwise unattainable.

In conclusion, collecting and leveraging big data in the healthcare sector holds immense promise for improving patient outcomes, streamlining operations, managing hospital performance, and advancing medical knowledge and biomedical research. Embracing data-driven approaches will undoubtedly help with improving health outcomes for individuals and population health.

More Applications for Healthcare Providers

Several enterprises, large and small, like Cerner Corporation, IBM, San Francisco-based Oracle, and MedeAnalytics, have developed expertise in medical big data analysis both inside and outside of the clinical environment. These market leaders are pushing the boundaries of data science in healthcare while making the technology more accessible to smaller hospitals and those in rural areas.

Among the myriad applications of data science in healthcare and medicine, we’ve outlined a few key areas below.

Genomics

Genomics is an indispensable part of medicine and healthcare, and big data processing tools are helping sort out what’s most impactful from the rest. Using historical data, analysts can interpret and understand data to develop recommendations for sequencing experiments.

Predictive Analytics

The medical and healthcare industries can extract a lot of valuable insights from data, like predicting trends and behavior patterns to improve the patient experience and calculate the probability of medical outcomes based on past data and statistical analysis.

Medical Imaging

Although AI is doing a great job of helping radiologists find minute details in medical images, biomedical big data can help interpret X-rays, MRIs, and mammographies to find tumors, see patterns in the data, look for anomalies, and recommend next steps.

Monitor Patient Health

Healthcare providers can monitor their patients’ health by continuously storing and analyzing medical information from patients. Providers can also use analytics to monitor patient vitals like body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure — all in real-time.

Provide Virtual Help

Patients can find virtual care with comprehensive platforms that provide secure video conferencing, an easy way to view a patient’s medical history, and a way to get back in touch with the doctor. There are also platforms that allow patients to enter their symptoms into a search bar to find possible diseases and causes of illness. The platform will subsequently offer recommendations on the next steps, providers nearby, and possible solutions.

Launch New Drugs

Using data science, pharmaceutical companies are predicting financials and the potential impact of a new drug by analyzing data from operational pipelines starting from the manufacturer and all the way down to the consumer.

Track and Manage Health Conditions

Providers can use data science to track potential cases that their patient is prone to. For example, patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes can benefit from constant tracking meals, blood glucose levels, and physical activity zones.

Overcoming Challenges of Big Data in Healthcare

Although the potential and promise of healthcare big data analytics seems endless, there are some challenges that have been uncovered. For example, there is always the lingering risk of cybersecurity attacks. Because healthcare data is private and requires the highest level of discretion, it’s imperative to layer robust data security protocols on top of any analytics application.

Other challenges in analyzing and processing big data include a shortage of IT professionals with relevant experience, ensuring medical data safety, and issues with data integrity. There are also issues surrounding the lack of regulations, best practices, and unified procedures.

In addition to the aforementioned challenges, healthcare system often grapples with high healthcare costs associated with implementing big data tools. The expense of procuring state-of-the-art hardware, software, and recruiting skilled data scientists can be significant. Furthermore, training existing staff to adeptly navigate these tools can add to the financial burden.

Another critical concern is the integration of disparate data sources. Health data comes from a myriad of sources like electronic medical records, insurance claims, clinical trials, and wearable devices, each with its own format, making data consolidation a complex task. This fragmentation often impedes the efficient extraction of insights, thus undermining the potential benefits of big data in healthcare.

Lastly, regulatory compliance poses a challenge, especially when dealing with sensitive patient data across different regions with varying privacy laws. Striking a balance between harnessing the power of big data and ensuring compliance with these regulations is a major hurdle for healthcare systems worldwide.

Access to Data and Technology in the Healthcare Industry

Giving hospitals, medical providers, and stakeholders in the healthcare industry access to technology for analyzing vast amounts of data has already made a positive impact on patients and providers. It has also improved the quality of health care by allowing us to predict trends, prevent diseases, monitor symptoms, manage health conditions, find better pharmaceuticals, and more accurately calculate dosages.

The advantages of big data in healthcare seems more than obvious. Human health professionals now have unprecedented access to clinical data, enabling them to gain valuable insights and patterns to improve patient care and treatment outcomes. From predictive analytics to medical imaging and genomics, big data analytics is revolutionizing medical decision-making and empowering providers to monitor patient health in real-time, offer virtual care solutions, and optimize treatment plans.

However, the adoption of big data in healthcare comes with hurdles. Security remains a top concern due to the sensitive nature of health data, demanding robust measures against cybersecurity threats. Additionally, addressing the shortage of IT professionals with relevant experience and ensuring data integrity are critical to fully harnessing the potential of big data technologies. Despite these challenges, the transformative impact of big data in healthcare is evident, as organizations leverage data-driven insights to enhance patient care and advance medical research. Through collaborative efforts among health professionals, data scientists, and policymakers, the healthcare industry can navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and continue on a trajectory of improved efficiency, reduced medical errors, and ultimately, better health outcomes for patients worldwide.

Using big data and data science, healthcare is poised to explode in growth and patient satisfaction. What will we use data analytics for next? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

In our last Amazon post about its medical and healthcare strategy, we covered the successes and potential improvements of PillPack and Amazon Care. If you missed it, you can check it out here. In this second and final post of the Amazon healthcare series, we’ll dive into Comprehend Medical, Alexa, Haven, and the ramifications of data and privacy.

Amazon’s Comprehend Medical

Comprehend Medical is an extension of Amazon Web Services, and it’s just as much an artificial intelligence (AI) application as it is a MedTech one. The technology focuses on the comprehension of electronic medical records, which are notoriously complex, rich with years of patient history, and more focused on insurance billing than clinical analysis and data capture. Not only does Amazon offer transcription services that map the patient’s data into the appropriate field, but it also standardizes the healthcare data along the way so that medical clients can easily access and use the data.

The technology also uses AI to study imaging files and find possible abnormalities. However, because the AI algorithms are being developed for specific cases and diseases, the imaging portion of the technology is slower-moving.

Amazon’s Haven Collaboration

As opposed to Amazon Care’s potential to become the newest trend of corporate healthcare offerings, Haven is a little more elevated in potential and theory. The Haven service was launched in early 2018 as a collaboration between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase. The companies named Oxford- and Stanford-educated Atul Gawande, M.D., which further elevated expectations of the venture.

But, in May, Gawande stepped down as CEO, dealing a big blow to the Haven collaboration. Haven’s self-proclaimed goal on its website is to undertake “commonsense fixes as well as innovative approaches” to healthcare access for patients, easier-to-understand insurance benefits, and more affordable prescription drugs. The company’s strategy is to use technology and data to improve the “overall healthcare system”. It’s unclear what exact technologies the company is using, what exactly they’re tackling, and what changes they want to exact upon the healthcare system. Recently, Haven partnered with Cigna and Aetna to offer employees at JPMorgan healthcare plans with increased transparency in pricing.

Alexa’s Medical Skills

Amazon partnered with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield to create a program in 12 states for members to use Amazon Alexa smart assistants to refill prescriptions, answer insurance-related questions about deductibles and claims, and schedule appointments. Rajeev Ronanki is Anthem’s chief digital officer. Ronanki says the goal is to “simplify the experience for our members.”

The service was first introduced in 2018 by Anthem for informational questions, like giving the user the nearest doctor’s or pharmacy’s information without collecting identifying data about the user. When Amazon became HIPAA-certified in 2019, however, Anthem became interested in further pushing the boundaries of what Alexa can do for its members. Across the Atlantic, Britain’s National Health Service signed up with Amazon to use Alexa to provide general health information and guidance in 2019.

Privacy and Data Concerns

Amazon’s an enormous company with a lot of data about our browsing habits, shopping behavior, and likes and dislikes. By dipping its hands into healthcare, we encounter an unspoken understanding that one company will have more varied information and diverse data points about us than ever before. How is Amazon using the data they’ve accumulated? For patients using Alexa through the National Health Service, the company said they were not creating health profiles or using the health information about each patient to recommend products.

However, the devices have been shown to send recordings to Amazon without the user’s consent. Amazon also keeps the recordings to use for training its AI algorithm. According to Ronanki, however, Alexa isn’t retaining any member information, and that caveat is in “our contract.” Alexa does verify the user’s voice for authentication purposes.

Without the healthcare data, Amazon can still use the learnings from these ventures to develop customized medical applications for other organizations. For example, Amazon can use information about British patients as learnings to apply to another partnership. Some experts, on the other hand, worry about using healthcare data for marketing purposes, especially for patients who have Medicare Advantage.

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Amazon’s Ongoing Healthcare Strategy

To become a big player in healthcare, Amazon has to work with the entrenched companies, and this becomes increasingly challenging as insurance and healthcare companies are consolidating to build bigger market shares. Adding the pandemic into the mix, healthcare innovation has accelerated particularly for patient experience and convenience. And more concerningly, the federal government has relaxed its rules and regulations on healthcare and insurance companies during the pandemic to allow patients to get faster and cheaper care at their convenience.

But it’s this loosening of regulations that has opened up the floor for Amazon to jump in, whether with an idea that increases patient convenience, like its new digital pharmacy, or an idea that revolves around the acquisition of a major telehealth or healthcare company. It’s still not certain what Amazon’s healthcare strategy is, at least not at first glance. The company will need to work hard to find a way to fit all of its health ventures into a neat little package.

One thing is for sure: Amazon is definitely interested in healthcare and medicine, and we can’t stop the company from becoming a healthcare juggernaut in the next decade or so. Would you use Alexa to find a nearby doctor? Are you open to purchasing prescriptions from Amazon Pharmacy? And how concerned are you about your data being used or sold for marketing purposes? Let us know in the comments below!