KIT: Technology in healthcare

Strategic tools for the practising manager

Technology has the potential to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care at a much reduced cost. The digitisation of healthcare create a foundation for a future that offers more efficient patient care and cost savings. Innovations such as M-health, Telemedicine, VoIP, multimedia collaboration tools, and wireless services allow medical staff to access patient data and communications tools from any location while nanotechnology in healthcare is all set to revolutionise the entire gamut of services and its delivery.

M-health
M-health offers a real time disease management technology especially for chronic diseases. The programme is developed utilising mobile phones and other digital media to motivate people to maintain health. It provides monitoring and comprehensive care solutions for chronic diseases and enables doctors to see patient records instantly and take informed decision about disease management.

Telemedicine
This technology allows health care professionals to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients in remote locations, offers the convenience and comfort to patients in remote locations to access medical expertise quickly, efficiently, without travel and creates a large patient base for the providers. It provides more efficient use of limited resources as the physicians can see patients from multiple locations.

Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology can lead to the creation of cell-repair-machines (possibly true nano-robots), facilitate drugs to act faster, in smaller doses, can do away with blood leaks in surgery, can revolutionise early-disease-detection and blast cancer away without affecting the rest of body. Three key areas in which Nanotech-nology can work wonders are prevention, diagnosis and treatment.