Over the years, there have been several technologies that have emerged to help the healthcare industry fight illness, create new vaccines and medicines as well as help people live a healthy lifestyle in the long run.
This is especially the case over two years as the Covid-19 pandemic is still looming over us a bit. Over the last two years, several tech companies rose up to look for ways to solve the problems brought about by the global pandemic. In the same vein, many traditional healthcare companies started turning their attention to technology to help revolutionise their products and services.
The emergence of the pandemic in late 2019 could be said to have accelerated the digitisation of the healthcare industry, and according to analysts, 80% of the healthcare providers will be increasing their investment in technology and digital solutions in the next five years just like how like several online casinos – nettikasinot have massively invested in technology over the years.
Technology has already transformed some areas we are familiar with including telemedicine, genomics, and personalised medicine. Now, artificial intelligence is slowly being incorporated into the industry alongside Extended Reality (XR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve treatments.
In this article, we will be listing out a few tech health trends in 2022.
Extended Reality (XR) For Training & Treatment
Extended Reality (XR) is the term that combines Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) altogether.
All of these techs employ the use of lenses or headsets that changes our perception of our environment by either placing us in a new virtual space (VR) or overlaying virtual images on the physical world around us (AR/MR). They all have a part to play in the healthcare industry.
Currently, VR headsets are being used to train doctors and surgeons, which will help them get even more familiar with the human body without putting the patients at risk.
It doesn’t require a constant supply of medical cadavers either. It can also be used for treatments like therapy where it will be used to train kids with autism. Anxiety, cognitive behavioural therapy, and schizophrenia can all be treated using VR headsets.
AR has already made it into the industry in the form of AccuVein and Microsoft’s HoloLens system. The AccuVein system was developed to make things easier for both doctors and nurses to locate veins when it’s injection time by detecting the heat signature of the patient’s blood flow.
It will then proceed to highlight the area on the patient’s arm. The HoloLens, on the other hand, can be used in the surgical theatres, where it’ll give the surgeon real-time data on what they are seeing. The data will also be shared with other professionals observing the operation.
AI Integration
AI and machine learning have also made it into the healthcare industry, but their integration is a little bit slower than in other industries. Currently, AI is being used as a form of assistant, which has somewhat reduced the workload of medical professionals, making their work easier and faster. And as programs continue to grow sophistically, they will be able to complete complex tasks.
In the healthcare industry, AI could be said to be in the early stages as its adoption and integration have been slow when compared to other industries. However, it has great potential in this section.
After all, AI has been integrated into almost all AR being used by doctors in the surgical theatres, it is the assistant giving them real-time data on what the surgeons are seeing. In the nearest future, it will be more than just an assistant in the healthcare industry.
Remote Healthcare
The percentage of healthcare consultations that happened remotely in the first few months of the pandemic rose from 0.1% to 43.5%. That is an astronomical rise. People are trapped in their homes for safety reasons at the time, so they had no other option than to seek healthcare consultations remotely.
There are several reasons why it is important for medical professionals to develop the ability to examine, diagnose and treat patients remotely. This ability will be needed in areas where there is a shortage of doctors and medical professionals. Remote healthcare will go a long way in saving lives in these areas.
Personalised Medicine
Medicines and treatments were previously being created as a “one-for-all” kind of method. Trials will be carried out to optimise medicines for effectiveness with the highest number of patients and lowest number of side effects.
However, the advent of technology like Genomics (the study of genes) and AI allows the healthcare industry to take a personalised approach that resulted in treatments and medicines being specially designed for an individual.
Healthcare in Sweden employs the use of AI and modelling software to predict the exact dosage of painkillers along with synthetic opiates for individual patients. This kind of application is slowly being spread across the globe, and it’s only a matter of time before every healthcare has them.
