Healthcare: The Hottest Digital Trends for 2021

Featured article by Kaley Spenser, Independent Technology Author

The healthcare industry has been rapidly growing in recent years. Moreover, the COVID pandemic has influenced all facets of the healthcare industry. It is clear that innovation is needed to fight the pandemic. To understand where the healthcare industry is going, studying the main trends is of utmost importance. In this post, we’ll take a deeper look at the key trends that can influence and boost custom healthcare software development!

Artificial Intelligence As a New and Rapidly Growing Trend

Although at first sight, the integration of this technology seems to be costly, it can save up to $150 billion every year. Currently, AI robotics is used in nursing. On top of that, the applications of AI in the healthcare industry also include virtual health assistants, chatbots, medical dosage, workflow optimization, robot-assisted surgery, etc. We can see that the number of AI startups is growing at the velocity of sound.

AI-based image recognition is one of the latest trends in diagnosis. The thing is that these powerful devices can easily monitor optical and dermatological deviations intrinsic to diabetes and other illnesses. Plus, image recognition is also a must-have tool in cancer detection.

In current times, Artificial Intelligence is also used to examine biological and chemical interactions in the drug discovery process. We also couldn’t mention the COVID pandemic; AI tools were used in the COVID outbreak response. They helped medical experts to examine the virus, stop its spread, and learn molecules, trying to find the treatment.

Telemedicine

Last year, over 43% of medicare visits used telehealth methods instead of in-person visits. And one of the greatest benefits of this method is that it reduces contact between people and healthcare professionals. Thanks to wearable devices, doctors could get real-time information about the patients that remained at home.

On top of that, the rapid development of telemedicine still continues even after the COVID pandemic is almost over. Statistically, over 70% of US patients used telemedicine at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Telehealth services are mostly provided via telemedicine mobile applications. When electronic healthcare records are integrated into an app, healthcare providers can easily access this information and provide timely treatment.

The Internet of Medical Things

In current times, various mobile apps are used to track and prevent chronic diseases for patients and doctors. By combining telemedicine technologies and IoT development, the Internet of Medical Things entered the market. This relatively new approach includes the use of wearable devices that can easily check blood pressure, measure temperature or glucose level. It is expected that by 2026, the whole industry will be worth over $6 trillion. So we can assume that this trend is here to stay.

One of the main challenges this area faces is to establish communication with medical IoT devices. When it comes to collecting large amounts of data, this may cause difficulties.

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Medicine

It goes without saying that virtual and augmented reality also offers an unsurpassed variety of benefits to the healthcare system. Currently, VR and AR technologies are used for the following cases:

-Diagnostics and prevention of illnesses. Healthcare workers use the camera to check the examination data and compare it with the previous results.

– Emergency response. This allows emergency responders to find important information quickly.

– Education. Such digital trends can easily change medical education for the better as they provide a more immersive experience.

– Surgery. In this case, VR is used to create 3D reconstructions of organs. This technology is mostly used when a surgeon needs to work under complicated conditions.

– Pain management. VR and AR trends allow reducing the use of painkillers.

– Rehabilitation. Currently, VR applications are used to treat depression and anxiety.

Wrapping up what has been said, we need to draw a conclusion – digitalization is here to stay. It is and will surely be one of the main concepts that will change this industry in the upcoming years. However, to stay relevant, the healthcare industry needs to use new technical solutions. And this is where the services of Emerline might come in handy! The team of professional and experienced custom healthcare developers can help bring your ideas into reality!