Transforming Healthcare Analytics. Michael N. Lewis

Transforming Healthcare Analytics - Michael N. Lewis


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and more likely with family and close friends, we get intimate details such as “I am not feeling too good,” or “My wife and I have been sick with a cold,” or “My daughter was recently in the hospital for a sports-related knee injury.” These conversations normally lead to further and more detailed discussions about us and our wellbeing. Conversations and discussions around health can be attributed to its natural presence and ominous impact on all of us.

Illustration depicting three major areas shaping the state of healthcare: Health technology, medical research, and medical procedures.

      Source: Author.

      Other advancements, such as surgical technology, breathing apparatuses, and technologies that deliver and administer medicine have improved and are helping to save people's lives. It's not just the equipment that has changed. Take, for example, the administration of anesthesia. Decades ago, when patients needed to numb pain, they either had no anesthesia or had to be put under completely. Today, clinicians can administer anesthesia locally or to a certain area and patients are more comfortable because they will not feel the pain when having a minor operation.

      The biggest change that technology is able to deliver is the way healthcare professionals communicate. Long gone are the days where doctors can only be reached via a beeper. When a doctor was beeped, that clinician would need to find a phone to call that number. Now, however, hospital staff can communicate with one another more effectively and update each other in near real time. We have personally witnessed the use of speech to text when nurses or doctors are documenting their patients. In addition, speech commands can be used to call a specialist or doctor without having to pick up a mobile phone. It is similar to using a cloud-based voice service like Alexa, Siri, or Cortana. Nurses and doctors can simply use speech commands such as “Call Dr. Smith” or “Is Nurse Jo available to come to room 311?”

      Technology changes how we all live and work but we believe it has improved and benefited the healthcare industry the most. Compared to a few decades ago, we are seeing more tablets, mobile devices, and digital monitoring systems being used to improve lives. Lives are being saved every day because of the progress made in technology for healthcare.

      Advances in research have accelerated in the past 10 years. Think of all the discoveries for managing diseases such as diabetes, new drugs and treatments for managing HIV thanks to clinical pharmacology, and procedures for minimizing recovery time for heart condition victims. However, the biggest advancement in health research has been combating cancer and increasing the survival rate. Cancer is one of the most debilitating and deadliest diseases and claims many lives annually. Historically, if you were diagnosed with cancer, you were guaranteed not to survive and may have had only days or weeks to live. Today, more and more people are surviving each and every day. While some people can see cancer going into remission, others live long and fruitful lives with the aid of medications. The key to this advancement is medical research. It has allowed clinicians to detect early signs of cancer and prepare a regimen plan before it can spread or become deadly. If cancer is detected early, the chances of survival are higher, thanks to advanced research in medicine, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy.

      Healthcare professionals and executives continue to push the envelope and invest in health research, which has continued to accelerate in the past decades. Although it is impossible to discover everything or have a breakthrough all at once, there will always be new discoveries and ways to augment healthcare through research. There are technicians in labs across the world pouring over research data to advance medical research and find innovative discoveries made every day and that is a terrific thing for healthcare in the medical research field.


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