Digital health refers to the application of technology to the provision of healthcare. Health information technology (IT), wearable medical devices, health informatics, software as a medical device, mobile health (mHealth), personalized medicine, and telemedicine and telehealth are just a few of the many digital health technologies and subfields that fall under this umbrella.
The fact that the field is expanding swiftly may not come as a surprise. The global market for digital health is anticipated to increase from 175 billion in 2019 to almost 660 billion in 2025.
According to a Statista analysis from 2021. This exponential growth is evidence of the growing need for high-quality medical care as well as the ever-expanding reach of digital technologies.
Why is Digital Health Important?
The ability to communicate with other systems and devices is present in medical equipment. Patients and medical professionals can better understand each person’s health status by safely transferring data between platforms. The tremendous transformation that will take healthcare to the next level will be led by cloud-based technologies that exchange data.
The development of digital health is anticipated to stop the spread of numerous diseases by enabling patients to monitor their health and giving doctors easy access to patient data.
How Can Retina Risk Support the Health of Your Eyes?
One digital health service that is revolutionizing diabetic eye health is Retina Risk. The risk of sight-threatening diabetic eye illness is precisely calculated by the scientifically proven Retina Risk algorithm.
One of the main reasons why people become blind is diabetic neuropathy. In more than 90% of instances, it can be avoided with early detection and prompt treatment. The Retina Risk app gives diabetics the ability to monitor and estimate their risk of developing a sight-threatening diabetic eye illness.
Objectives of Digital Health
- Enhanced healthcare delivery capabilities
- Improving and expanding access
- Assisting each person as best as possible
- Lowers the price
- Increasing and enhancing the standard of healthcare
- Customizing treatment to meet the specific demands and needs of each patient
Advantages of Digital Health
The clinical judgments of doctors can be supported by a variety of mobile medical software and apps that use machine learning and artificial intelligence. The primary deciding element is whether these solutions have clinical validation, like the Retina Risk algorithm or not.
The use of computing platforms, software, networking, and sensors in digital health technology supports the monitoring of health metrics as well as other related functions.
The following are a few ways that digital health can enhance the services provided by doctors while assisting patients in maintaining their health.
Responsive Healthcare and Sustainable
A rise in life expectancy has been accompanied by a steady rise in the number of persons suffering from chronic illnesses. The price of healthcare services has significantly increased as a result of this.
There has been a rising shift towards using digital health approaches for treatment as a result of these changes in the healthcare industry. A new era of wearables and smart care is being ushered in by ground-breaking technologies. In this post, we discussed Smart Contact Lenses as a method for patients to take charge of their health and give themselves the power to live better.
Digital platforms can assist patients in gaining quicker access to healthcare services, which will enhance the caliber of care they receive as well as the outlook for their health problems. By introducing the idea of patient self-care, these platforms have also contributed to easing the pressure on medical staff members as well as facilities like hospitals and clinics.
Treatment After Prevention
Patients who regularly track their symptoms with the aid of digital health technologies can better manage their health conditions. Digital health provides a tool that can aid in the early detection of signs that indicate the onset and progression of disease, before serious harm to healthy tissues, such as the lungs, has taken place.
Patients can avoid significant issues and prevent irreparable health damage by using digital health platforms that enable quick identification of warning signs. Retinal Imaging Technology is one such method that aids in the early detection of diabetic retinopathy.
This is why digital health platforms are so important, especially for those with diabetes and, as we have demonstrated with our app, for people at risk for diabetic retinopathy, which can be sight-threatening.
Patient-Doctor Relationship Redesign
Patients may be able to communicate with their healthcare providers more readily by using digital health systems. In some circumstances, it might allow patients to participate in creating their treatment programs.
Patients’ faith in their doctor and treatment can increase when they have direct, quick, and shared access to information about their health. Maintaining open communication between the patient and the doctor might also be beneficial.
This data may provide a clear profile of the variables that may affect the patient’s prognosis. This enables medical professionals to suggest modifications to the course of food, treatment, and lifestyle to enhance the prognosis. The doctors can make better decisions the more recent the data is.
Increasing the Impact on Healthcare Personnel
The most recent developments in the digital health system aim to reduce the repetitiveness and administrative weight of the tasks that healthcare professionals must carry out.
New digital health systems offer key advantages such as cost savings, increased accessibility, and heightened availability. As a result, they may be able to spend more time with patients and create a more effective plan for patient monitoring.
This is crucial for patients, remote clinics, and patients receiving home care who have difficult or expensive travel. These patients may be able to provide crucial health information to the doctors whenever they choose thanks to the clinical-grade tools provided by digital health.
Decreases Efficiencies
By making data readily available, digital tools allow medical professionals a comprehensive understanding of the patient’s health. Additionally, it may give patients more power over their health, which would improve patient management. Hopefully, soon enough, paperwork and bureaucracy will be a thing of the past!
Lower Expenses
By enabling patients to manage their care through apps that can track their health metrics, digital health has reduced the cost of total treatments.
Improved Access
Doctors can swiftly improve medical outcomes and treatment efficiency by using digital health systems to access patients’ data instantly in a comprehensible form that enhances clarity and accuracy.
Improve Patient Care by Personalizing Medicine
Patients can monitor and keep track of their wellness-related activities using digital health technologies. These technological advancements include the utilization of gadgets like smartphones, web-based programs, and social media platforms that can assist in tailoring treatment regimens for patients based on their particular complaints and health criteria.
Quality Improvement
Patients can use digital health technologies to help them make educated decisions about their health. Outside of conventional healthcare settings, it can offer opportunities for facilitating early detection, prevention, and management of chronic diseases. The quality of the global healthcare system has increased as a result of this.
Disadvantages of Digital Healthcare
Although healthcare digitization is a tremendous advancement, it still has several challenges to overcome, just like any other evolutionary transformation.
- For customers, privacy and security are top priorities.
- Data processing is the main challenge facing the digital healthcare sector because hospitals and other platforms acquire a lot of sensitive data.
- Cybersecurity is a big problem in digital healthcare, just like it is with any other digital platform.
- Patients’ records can be accessed by hackers.
- It should be regularly upgraded.
- Patients worry about complicated and sophisticated health information.
- The cost of digital health records.
- Processes that are complex and composite.
- Digital services must satisfy their customers.
- Lastly, not all healthcare practitioners are open to using digital health technologies and prefer to stick with older, more established procedures.
