The Importance of innovation to shorten the great gaps in the health system

Photo: Tim Mossholder

Healthcare innovation can create better patient care and more optimized health centers. By providing new and innovative solutions, health centers can efficiently optimize their care model and make it more accessible for patients. Healthcare innovation also helps lower healthcare costs. Healthcare innovation is crucial and will require the use of better tools and technologies to address health issues on a greater scale. Let's see how this can be achieved with the use of new AI technologies.

Why is innovation so important for healthcare?

In almost any industry, user experience has become vital and a top priority. Accessibility, easier communication, and firm relationships are key to a successful business model. However, the healthcare system has been overwhelmed by the increase in the number of patients, especially in the last couple of years. This has forced the health sector to look for new, innovative, and proactive solutions to solve many issues such as long waiting times, complicated schedules, increased costs, and no-shows.

Innovation is crucial in healthcare as it offers better outcomes for patients, effective use of resources, decreased costs, and a better patient experience. Innovation in healthcare can also lead to better medicine, treatments, and technologies which can help both health centers and patients.

Innovation through digitalization

Over the last few years, the process of digitalization of healthcare has become increasingly popular. EHR or electronic health records are now practically a standard. Furthermore, many new treatments and the use of digital tools such as wearables and apps have enhanced the patient experience and made it easier for patients to actively participate in their healthcare journeys. Innovation in healthcare, overall, is a broad term and can encompass many things such as novel therapies, surgical procedures, tools, and tests but also education, procurement, and service delivery models. To introduce the most efficient solutions, however, health centers need to utilize cutting-edge digital healthcare technologies. Recently, some of the most effective means of solving various healthcare-related issues have come with the implementation and usage of AI systems.

New AI solutions

Communication with patients has always been a critical part of the patient-doctor relationship. During the global pandemic, health centers have realized how impactful an increase in patients can be and how it can hinder communication and create a mess for scheduling patients. In addition to this, many patients with chronic diseases were unable to reach their doctors on time or monitor their condition. New AI solutions in the form of machine learning and natural language processing AI have provided many benefits and created a much-needed innovative approach to patient-doctor interactions. A natural processing engine AI in communication with patients has the ability to deliver all of the necessary information on time and help patients schedule their appointments, reschedule and confirm them, create preventive campaigns as well as help clinics with administrative tasks.

This kind of AI can have an active and natural conversation with patients where patients might not even notice that they are talking to an AI. Natural language processing engine also helps clinics by performing a multitude of administrative tasks which otherwise take a lot of time and staff.

The results of applying innovative solutions

The clinics that have begun utilizing different technologies in the form of AI that are now available have shown an immense number of positive results. According to a recent McKinsey study, new technologies could reduce the total burden of disease by 6 to 10 percent in the coming years. AI has shown incredible progress in the world of healthcare and further digitalization of the health sector could prove vital for new, innovative solutions. The patient no-shows numbers are traced in a far easier way when utilizing AI equipped with machine-learning and natural language processing capabilities. The ability of this AI to track potential no-shows and also communicate with patients can greatly save time, and effort, and end up being a very cost-effective solution for health clinics.