COVID-19 had largely sped up the digital transformation of healthcare and boosted innovation in how patients can receive and consume care. While challenges come unprecedented, this time continues to spell a phase of massive transformation and growth for the industry.
Personalized, Safe, Efficient, and Integrated Experience
Digitization of healthcare promises to help healthcare providers streamline operations, understand what the patient requires, build loyalty and trust and offer a better user experience.
Adapting to the digital era looks like seamless patient-doctor communications, real-time and remote patient monitoring, efficient risk predictions, improved diagnostics, timely alerts, e-prescriptions – all leading to a patient-focused approach to healthcare.
We need to consider how new design considerations and new models of healthcare are delivered in this time while being set against a backdrop of an aging health building infrastructure that’s ill-suited to meet the demands of a growing population, a changing workforce and new technologies.
Safe Access to Healthcare at your Doorstep
One of the paradoxes of the new normal is safe access to healthcare. How does one cope if even the journey to reach a healthcare center is fraught with risk?
Healthcare is becoming accessible to patients right in their homes with an uptick in the availability of self-care devices. With a disrupted balance between demand and supply of healthcare services, many diagnostic and treatment devices (like dialysis) are being manufactured for at-home patient care. The greatest example of that is contactless care, touchless healthcare, or just simple telemedicine,” Skelton continued.
Insight for designers:
Design consumer-friendly devices that patients can operate themselves, without dealing with technical complexities.
Improved Turnaround Time for Diagnostics Data
If there’s one thing the pandemic has made us realize, it’s the value of swift action. Especially true for healthcare, how do we make sure we improve turnaround times?
Clinics have shortened the turnaround time for processes and discovery in recent times in response to the current scenario. There has been a focus to optimize clinical processes to reduce the turnaround time so that clinics can identify and test rapidly.
Insight for designers:
Look at how to optimize the workflows and focus on improving the overall customer experience over different devices and software, for patients as well as the medical staff.
Integrated User Experience Through Platforms
We had email, we had chat, we had video conferencing, and we had cell phone photos. We’ve found a way to marry many of those, put them together, and get a completely different outcome for both patients and physicians.”
There is increasing usage of platforms that integrate different patient services. Integration of various services right from choosing and going to the doctor, to helping maintain documents on a single platform has made it easier for patients to access their medical history and experience patient care in a seamless manner.
Insight for designers:
Pay attention to an overall cohesive experience of the platform, with a focus on reassuring the patients of the security and privacy of their data. There was a time when we would think twice about telling anyone how much we weigh. But now, our entire medical history is handled by a platform. What can we do to make sure users feel safe?
Unification of Medical Data – Internet of Medical things
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to devices connected with each other via the Internet – such as wearables, connected inhalers, smart beds, ECG, EKG monitors, and other facilities. IoMT tools help clinicians to monitor patients at home or on the go from any corner of the world. Connected devices ensure users take medication; they measure vitals, set reminders and display alerts.
Healthcare is transitioning to an integrated ecosystem where data is shared across devices.
Organizations and device manufacturers are increasingly using IoT to unify healthcare data by creating common healthcare repositories.
Insight for designers:
Relook at this as a systemic shift and consider how the insights from these repositories can be used to help create better- reliable, accurate, safe experiences across devices. A constant endeavor on what can we do to navigate this shift while making sure users feel safe would be critical to the adoption and success of this trend.
The healthcare crisis at hand and the advent in the growth of technology is marking a new era for public health. Investing in the right technology and designing integrated patient care systems would become key to living a quality lifestyle and ensuring longevity for our civilization.
Author is Stuti Mazumdar, Deputy Design Studio Head at Think Design Collaborative
(DISCLAIMER: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by the author or authors are solely their own and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of Business Today)