Future of IT in Hospital Care

I asked a question in my last post, “What will the future of healthcare look like?” I could also ask that question in another way: “How will information technology impact the way we practice medicine and interact with hospitals? I will attempt to answer the question in different domains:

Source: nyp.org

1.     Disease Diagnosis:  The emphasis on disease management might change in the next 50 years to the development of “diagnostic supercomputers” that can scan the individual, take the vital signs, check important chemical substances like electrolytes, hemoglobin, bicarbonates and other biomedical markers and come up with a diagnosis in a matter of minutes. The role of the doctor might then be to “discuss” with the machine about the rationale for making that diagnosis as well as explore other potential differentials. This goes a step ahead of the currently used clinical decision making systems in that the decisions might be made by the computer and doctors then help to serve as checks and balances.

2.     Patient Treatment: This means that almost no human contact will be needed to prescribe and dispense drugs for patients. The risk of wrong prescription or dispensing will be minimized and pharmacists will only need to monitor the computer programs, much as is being done in hospitals like Bumrungrad today. However, in the hospital of the future, the computer will send the drug prescription directly to the dispensing computer that will ensure that the drugs are given directly to the patient. This system could be expanded to involve medication adherence systems. I will discuss this in a later post.

3.     Streamlined electronic health records: in the health care system of the future, humans will have one unique medical record which they will have access to anytime, anywhere. This can be pulled up at accident scenes, operating theatres, outpatient facilities, etc. This personalized health record will be totally “virtual” and will carry a unique ID much like the social security number. It is personal to the patient and then, patient notes do not need to be carried about they are stored and retrievable but can be accessed remotely anytime

4.     Voice Recognition: There might be no need to write notes by the physician as systems of that day but the system will have automatic voice-recognition software. This will enable the doctor to save money and time because the computer will have the ability to write the notes for the doctor.

5.     Others: There are so many things that will change which cannot be foreseen at the moment but I think that most of it will be beneficial as it has been shown now. However it is important to remember that all innovations in technology might have unintended consequences and it is important to weave-in monitoring and evaluation as an important part of the utilization of new technologies.