As people continue having seamless technological experiences with their retail and financial services, healthcare companies need to continue bringing an equivalent level of innovative, client-driven services to patients. There are several technologies that make engaging with today's healthcare organizations more interactive and insightful.
Tests
What's easier - taking a test at home or going to a medical facility to take that same test? For many, the answer is taking it at home. You can do it on your own time, in the comfort of your own home as opposed to fitting an office visit into your busy schedule, fighting traffic, an interminable wait in the waiting room and finally doing it all over again to get the result. Thanks to technological advances, now you can take a hormone test, an allergy test, and many other types right in your own home. This is just one way that tech is making healthcare easier for patients.
Wearables
There are a lot of different types of smartwatches out there, such as Fitbit and Garmin. Some of them can monitor things like your pulse, breathing, and sleep patterns. There are even models that can give you an EKG. Smartwatches aren't the only wearables out there though. There are many diverse types with the capability of monitoring your stats such as blood pressure and oxygen, your temperature and even the electrical activity of your muscles, skin or brain.
Chatbots
We already use chatbots on a variety of retail websites, so adopting them for hospitals and health plans can assist patients who need answers outside of office hours. As an example, Novo Nordisk developed a personalized chatbot called Sophia that's available at all hours on its Cornerstones4Care site. Developers have said she was created from insights from patients living with diabetes who let them know that they were looking for information outside of business hours.
Like many chatbots, Sophia uses AI tech that allows her to make more intelligent responses with the passing of time. Sophia's programming team designed her to 'learn' from conversations in order to understand what's most important to the patients she talks to so she can be better equipped to provide them the answers they're looking for more efficiently.
Smart Hospital Rooms
These days, hospital rooms are designed with caregivers and their patients in mind. This makes smart rooms more interactive, safer, and with more technology embedded in them. A design firm by the name of EIR Healthcare created a prefabricated hospital room called MedModular, that has 90% of the current tech already attached to fixtures and furniture.
These rooms are designed as plug-and-play rooms and feature sliding doors that are automatic for the showers, smart solid surfaces and windows meant to minimize the touchpoints in order to limit both the spread of bacteria and falls. The design also incorporates more comfortable accommodations and daybeds for caregivers. Due to these modular designs, both construction time and costs can be cut for patient care centers and hospitals.
Since the COVID pandemic, we've also seen a rise in telehealth. This is yet another way tech is making it easier for patients to get the healthcare they need. The thing is, since COVID numbers are going down, a lot of doctors are going back to nothing but office visits. A lot of people have difficulty getting to an office visit, which means they might miss out on the care they need. While tech IS making things easier for patients, doctors and healthcare organizations need to realize that these things only make it easier for the patients if they're actually offered and used.
