Indian Healthcare sector is no longer restricted to doctor-patient relationships, where a few rounds of consultations and medicines would limit patient care. Rapidly evolving new-age technologies are shifting patient care from detect-and-manage to predict-and-prevent. Healthcare culture has witnessed a sudden transformation and has now reached just above care, where geographical limitation doesn’t affect real-time engagement.

With the advent of more sophisticated technologies, it is imperative for healthcare industrialists and consumers to understand the forthcoming opportunities in 2020, as some of the most trending healthcare technologies will be tried and tested in this year.

#Trend 1: Blockchain For healthcare In India

Keeping our medical data safe and secure is going to become a necessity in the upcoming years. Blockchain technology can keep an incorruptible, decentralized and transparent log of all patient data. Blockchain has a wide range of applications. The technology facilitates the secure transfer of patient medical data, manages the medicine supply chain, which helps hospitals, insurers, labs, researchers and others to solve security problems related to data exchange. Blockchain has gained a lot of popularity in the past several years and now these blocks of the technology are coming together into real commercial implementations in Indian Healthcare Sector.

#Trend 2: Adoption of Cloud-Computing

Many hospitals in India have already undergone changing their legacy systems to include electronic health records (EHRs). EHR is a paperless digital platform, which needs to maintain digital infrastructure for record-keeping, databases, networking, and sharing large files. Here, the use of intelligence over the Internet – known as ‘Cloud Technology’ has became an appealing choice.

Cloud technology offers on-demand computing, greater reach (especially during times of disaster), quick access to networked information anywhere around the globe, security and privacy, better storage at a lower cost, faster access to real-time information, and provides necessary help in telemedicine & remote patient care.

#Trend 3: Application of Telemedicine

The World Health Organization (WHO) refers to telemedicine as “healing from a distance”. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technology for remote diagnosis and treatment of patients, irrespective of geographical location.

Telemedicine can be helpful in disease prevention and health promotion in almost every specialty. Telemedicine applications, such as audiovisual aids, video conference consulting, and healthcare-related conversations with physicians is used to inform and motivate patients. The benefits of telemedicine extend beyond cost and convenience. Telemedicine bridges the gaps that are hindering the access to quality medical care in India. It provides an opportunity to leapfrog many of the challenges faced by existing deficiencies in medical as well as non-medical infrastructure.

Related Post: How Digital Health is Revolutionizing the Healthcare in India

In India, telemedicine consultation is gaining progressive advances due to the growth of smartphone ownership and the spread of broadband internet connectivity.

#Trend 4 : Artificial Intelligence transforming healthcare

Artificial intelligence will have a tremendous impact on many industries, and healthcare is no exception. Artificial Intelligence is the future of almost every technology available. The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the Indian healthcare market significantly. Developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) machines, that can process information and provide decision-making data similar to what a human does.

AI has given rise to an entirely new sector of innovative healthcare technologies. AI-enabled healthcare services like automated analysis of medical tests, predictive healthcare diagnosis, machine learning algorithms, automation of healthcare diagnosis with the help of monitoring equipment, and sensor-based medical devices, are expected to revolutionize medical treatment processes in the country.

#Trend 5 : New age health insurance plans

Last year India observed slow growth in health insurance at less than 1.5 percent. The policies for the same are also getting aged and irrelevant. Hence, insurance companies have begun addressing healthcare as concern and started providing data and digital-driven healthcare services to insurance holders. This will incur a more personalized experience and reduce costs from potential claims. The upcoming year in the healthcare industry points towards preventive healthcare due to innovative insurance models based on information and data collected out of new-age technologies such as sensors, wearables, remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, and health trackers.

Conclusion

The Indian Healthcare industry is now reshaping and redefining the very concept of “healthcare”. It has moved far beyond curative care (focused on episodic care), to embrace preventive care and the concept of the “holistic care” through the pervasive health continuum. With the successful implementation of various healthcare technologies by both private and government sectors, there is growing optimism regarding the role of Information Technology (IT) in the healthcare sector in India.