Healthcare providers and medical professionals have increasingly adopted telemedicine solutions and begun offering patients a wide range of telehealth services.
In an industry that can be slow to adopt new innovations, the COVID-19 pandemic and distancing requirements were significant drivers in the rapid growth of the global telemedicine market. Since then the healthcare industry has embraced telemedicine services as a way to provide more convenient and immediate medical care for patients.
Telemedicine is still a growing sector of healthcare. This post will examine the most crucial telemedicine trends so your healthcare practice or business can position itself for the changes and patient expectations telehealth services will create.
The Emerging Trends in Telehealth Services
Healthcare professionals and organizations that provide healthcare services should take note of the emerging telemedicine trends. Telehealth solutions are not only growing in popularity among patients, but they are also showing great promise in care delivery.
Here are important trends in telemedicine that you should pay attention to:
- mHealth
- EHR integrated telemedicine
- IoMT
- AI
- Virtual Reality
- 5G
mHealth
mHealth is one of the most promising new avenues of health care through mobile applications. There are a plethora of innovative mobile applications that help people collect and track medical data.
Healthcare organizations must consider how they can partner with app developers or integrate with specific applications to improve their telehealth offerings and overall patient care.
There is significant potential in mHealth, especially as the popularity of integrated wearable devices like the Apple Watch continues to grow among the public. Not only can mHealth be used to track patient vitals, but it can also be used to provide medication and appointment reminders, manage records, and more.
EHR Integrated Telemedicine
Electronic health records (EHR) are vital to modern health care. EHR-integrated telehealth solutions ensure doctors always have the latest patient records and data.
People see a variety of providers to get health care. If those providers are not sharing records and data, getting comprehensive health care becomes next to impossible.
As telemedicine continues to gain popularity among patients and providers, EHR integration will become more critical. In addition, EHR integration with telemedicine services can also help patients simplify filing insurance claims, refilling prescriptions, and more.
IoMT
IoMT, or the Internet of Medical Things, is gaining rapid popularity with wearables and other connected medical devices. Data exchange between two systems is a massive capability that telehealth services should be exploring.
The most significant benefit of IoMT and other wearable devices is the potential for remote patient monitoring. Remote patient monitoring allows doctors to track patients’ vitals and other data in real-time without keeping them in a hospital or facility for observation.
Medical practitioners can use these technologies to help patients manage chronic diseases. Overall, IoMT has the potential to revolutionize health care and create significantly better outcomes for patients through preventative measures and remote monitoring.
If you are interested in telemedicine, now is the time to start considering how you can leverage IoMT in your service offerings.
AI
Artificial Intelligence is seemingly driving innovation in every industry. AI is impacting how healthcare is delivered and can be utilized to improve patient outcomes with earlier disease detection.
AI can be deployed to analyze vast amounts of health data to identify emerging trends, like diseases with pandemic potential. In addition, AI can analyze medical data to identify potential diseases faster than a doctor would identify them or show up in medical testing.
One of the underrated tasks AI could excel at is simply talking to people. AI-powered chatbots could be deployed to help patients answer common questions, understand health benefits, billing information, etc.
Studies are also being conducted to see how AI can help people suffering from mental health disorders. Talk therapy has been a significant facet of mental health care for decades. AI will never replace talk therapists, but AI could help patients when no therapist is available.
The true capabilities and value of Artificial Intelligence have barely been discovered yet. This is especially true in healthcare. Regardless of your business’s industry, AI is an important tech trend that should not be ignored.
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality technology has great potential to transform telehealth services. VR is often thought of as a gaming technology, but the applications of this innovative technology go far beyond video games.
For example, imagine virtually visiting the doctor using Virtual Reality from the comfort of your home. Telemedicine has become popular because of the convenience it provides.
However, telehealth has limitations, and it can be challenging for a doctor to fully understand specific issues if they are only seeing a patient on a small video screen. With upcoming VR innovations, a doctor could potentially do complete physical assessments virtually.
In addition, VR technology is already being used to help doctors train for surgeries and gain simulated experience. While VR technology is not quite to the point of being able to facilitate complete physical exams, the technology is not far away, and VR will significantly impact telehealth.
5G
Like AI, 5G is a significant technology innovation impacting all industries. 5G technology improves network communications, providing faster communication access and information exchange to more people.
Since telemedicine relies on communication, 5G is a vital technology to the ongoing success of telehealth applications and services. 5G stands to improve medical imaging, communications, remote patient monitoring, virtual meetings, and so much more.
If you’re interested in telehealth solutions, 5G should be at the top of your list regarding technologies to embrace.
Final Thoughts
Telemedicine is an exciting healthcare service offering growing in popularity with patients and medical providers. If you’re interested in developing a MedTech solution incorporating telemedicine features, contact an experienced MedTech app development partner like Koombea to learn more about the latest trends in the industry.
