Orion Health : Seven IT trends in health you need to know about now

Although technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, there is a real risk health services will look no different in 10 years' time unless attention is paid to how the sector adopts innovation.

That was one of the points made by Orion Health's general manager for Australia, David Dembo, in his keynote address, 'What will healthcare look like in 10 years? The seven key trends you need to know about', at the symposium.

Drawing on the work of marketing consultant Geoffrey Moore, Dr Dembo, who trained and worked as a doctor before moving into the health IT sector, says targeting 'pragmatists' - people who adopt new technologies only once they get endorsed by others in their industry - is central to expediting the adoption of innovation.

The pharmaceutical industry is good at doing this when promoting new medicines, providing pragmatists with research showing the efficacy of a new drug, and showing them that their peers are using it, he says.

The slow adoption of technology is not a new phenomenon. Dr Dembo pointed to the 50-year lag between the invention of the stethoscope and its widespread use following an endorsement by American physician Austin Flint in 1866.

As part of his keynote speech, Dr Dembo identified the following seven trends in health.

A changing workforce

'When I was at medical school, I was taught to take control, be directive and accountable for my decisions,' Dr Dembo says.

But he says medical students today are being recruited for their emotional intelligence (or EQ) as much as their IQ.

Research shows a direct correlation between doctors with high EQs and their patients' health outcomes, such as better medication compliance.

It also shows men tend to dominate specialties where patients are sedated or unconscious, whereas family medicine has become the domain of women.

Health as a data science

Before the widespread use of the stethoscope and x-rays (1930- 50), medicine relied on overt clinical signs and a patient's history.

From 1950 to the late 1990s, health had moved on from organs and tissues to cells, with lab tests and radiology.

Now clinical genomics enables examination at a molecular level, and the cost of genomic sequencing is declining.

Wearable devices and apps are becoming a valuable source of health data, too, given behavioral choices have more of an influence on health than genetics, social circumstances, and healthcare itself.

By 2020, worldwide digital healthcare data are expected to reach 25,000 petabytes (one petabyte is equal to one quadrillion bytes).

Artificial intelligence

Chatbots, computer-based robots, like 'Siri', have been around for a while, but last year, Microsoft researchers published a study showing that, by analyzing search engine queries, they could potentially identify people who had undiagnosed pancreatic cancer (J Oncol Pract 2016;12:737-44).

Warning flags for the disease were searches that indicated the web user was experiencing symptoms of pancreatic cancer.

Microsoft has also developed a search engine, available in the US, for credible health information, which is connected to sources like Medstory and Mayo Clinic.

Holograms

Dr Dembo says holograms, projected 3D images, could support 'true' telehealth. Instead of consulting via video, doctors could be beamed into the same room as their patients.

Mixed reality headsets, which show hovering 3D holograms, allow medical students to practice surgical procedures, and some medical schools are planning to do away with cadavers altogether.

Holograms of organs based on medical imaging data can help doctors virtually examine those organs and diagnose conditions or plan surgical procedures.

3D printing

Imagine not only prescribing medicines, but printing them out.
It's already happening in the US, where 3D printing has been used to manufacture levetiracetam tablets for epilepsy which are more dissolvable than those made with a traditional pill press.

Miniaturisation

Preventing disease from ever taking hold could be realized if nanoparticles can be designed to locate and destroy single diseased cells.

Nanotechnology can also be applied to mend diseased or damaged tissue by kick-starting the body's own repair mechanisms.

Blockchain

Originally devised for the digital currency, Bitcoin, a blockchain is a shared, decentralized database, recording changes (in 'blocks') chronologically (in a 'chain') and publicly via the internet.

Unlike traditional databases which have an administrator (for example, a bank) and can be edited by only one user at a time, blockchain technology allows changes to be made continuously by anyone within a network, much like Google Docs.

It has security benefits, too, as hacking one block in the chain is impossible without simultaneously hacking every other block.

The predominate use for blockchain technology in health settings would be for managing data.

Creating a medication prescription blockchain, for example, would allow every prescription event to be recorded and shared by those within the network.

The original article can be found at the New Zealand Doctor site here.