What improvements in medical technology could PMI providers expect to use in order to control costs in the near future? Doctor Peter Mills investigates
Apparently we now carry around more processing power in our pockets than was available on the Apollo spacecraft mission to the moon. Whether this is true or not, it certainly is amazing to ponder just how technological innovations over the last couple of decades have become integral to our every day lives.
This having been said, with the exception of medical diagnostics and treatment, healthcare professionals have generally been rather slow at adopting technology as a way of improving service delivery and clinical outcomes - medical colleagues were still not using email as recently as the early 2000s.
So how is technology going to shape the healthcare space in the next few years? Is it going to be more of the same late adoption of innovation, or are we going to see some ‘game changing' applications reach the frontline in the near future?
One thing we have to get right sooner rather than later is the digitization of health records. Sitting in my hospital out-patient clinic on a Friday morning it is still amazing that despite all of the advancements that have been made in transcription, storage and access, doctors are still presented with an unruly pile of paper as an excuse for a patient record.
Not only is this potentially dangerous, in that important pieces of information can be mislaid, or worse still, lost. But rummaging through them during a consultation is distracting and does nothing to optimise the short period of time I have with a patient.
Moving to a paperless world
There are a number of electronic health record systems on the market; some would say there are in fact too many. But with core standards in place it should not be too difficult to finally connect all aspects of an individual's healthcare record and finally get to a paperless system.
Perhaps more interesting is the personal health record; enabling individuals to own their health data in an electronic format. Whether this comes in the form of a ‘smart card' or whether it is stored online, is in the most part immaterial. What is fundamental is providing the population as a whole with systems that first and foremost they can trust.
The likes of Microsoft and Google have dabbled in this area, but do not seem to have gained any significant traction, possibly because when push comes to shove people just do not trust them with their personal health information. This whole area provides tremendous opportunities and would appear to be the ideal space that the private medical insurance providers (PMI) should be playing in.
Sometimes it seems like tele-health has been with us forever, but for some reason mass uptake has eluded providers of such services to date. However, a quiet revolution is occurring on the other side of the Atlantic with increasing numbers of health insurers using tele-health services to both augment their relationship with their members and reduce costs at the same time.
Many medical consultations do not need direct hands-on contact. Indeed, about 30% of the patients I see in my clinic do not need to be touched at all; a review of pertinent results together with a discussion about symptoms and appropriate treatment modifications often suffice.
With the ever increasing penetration of broadband access in the home, there is no longer the need for dedicated tele-presence suites to conduct such interactions. A perfectly adequate audio-visual connection can be made with a webcam and voice over IP telephony. Perhaps the technology has finally caught up with the concept of tele-health?
There are six billion people on the planet, yet the United Nations has reported there are 4.1 billion mobile phone contracts. This is a phenomenal opportunity to utilise this now ubiquitous technology for the purposes of health promotion and health management.
Endless possibilities
Couple this with the rapid adoption of smartphones (about a quarter of all mobile phone users in the UK have a ‘smartphone') and the opportunity to communicate and create a real bond between clinicians and patients is huge. Anything from booking an appointment, having a secure email conversation with a doctor, accessing results and viewing relevant informational videos are all possible in the here and now.
The overwhelming majority of the UK population now has access to the internet and with this comes an opportunity to connect people in ways that simply were not previously possible. I have recently been involved in developing a population-based weight loss and physical activity challenge in the state of Minnesota, USA and having analysed the data from the four month programme, it is very clear that being involved in a health promoting activity in a team creates a dynamic that enhances participation and also outcomes (in this case the amount of activity done and percentage of weight lost).
