Did Pandemic Boost the Health Care Industry Digital Transformation Journey?

The Healthcare industry is the one that stood firm against the fight of the pandemic. The fight is continued because the post-pandemic era requires a lot of improvements. 

During the pandemic, health care providers focused on Digital Technology Tools to expedite their operations and keep the costs low. This will continue after the pandemic. 

There are plenty of challenges in front of the health care industry while making the transition to digitally enabled healthcare systems. 

According to some CIOs of leading healthcare institutions, there should be two significant digital transformation objectives: Strengthening the virtual healthcare system and managing the financial impact.

What are the challenges?

During the pandemic, the one sector which came as the savior of humanity is Healthcare. However, this pandemic brought along a list of unprecedented challenges for the health care providers to continue helping patients. 

1 – How to prioritize the patients

2 – Reduce the footfalls in the clinics while providing care to all patients 

3 – Managing the enormous volume of patients’ data 

4 – Building a robust virtual healthcare system 

5 – Losing the revenue (Financial breakdown)

Is the digital transformation solution to all the above problems?

Yes, digital tools can help healthcare providers to tackle the challenges. IT team with digital tools in the backend helped the providers continue the health care support for the patients even in the most challenging times. 

1 – How to prioritize the patients?

– During the pandemic, one of the critical aspects was prioritizing the patients. Patients with chronic diseases, patients come for routine checkups, patients with COVID, surgeries, etc.

– Digital tools (AI, Cloud, Bigdata) came to the rescue for the healthcare providers by sorting out the patients based on the situation’s criticality. AI and cloud applications played a significant role.

2 – Reduce the footfalls in the clinics while providing care to all patients

– With the surge of medical attention requirements and COVID protocols, doctors decided to reduce the volume of in-person meetings with their patients. They started virtual care programs. 

– The number of telehealth visits increased as patients started to obtain outpatient care more. In numbers, several physicians noted the increase in telehealth by 50-175%. This increment in telehealth happened over a brief period. 

– Digital tools like IoT, AI improved communication, and data analysis.

3- Managing the enormous volume of patients’ data

– Cloud-based data storage and applications helped health care providers to manage the surge in storing patients’ data. 

– Centralized cloud access system enables doctors from various departments in different locations to easily access the patients’ information. 

4 – Building a robust virtual healthcare system 

– The pandemic has increased the reliance of the customers on digital healthcare technologies. 

– Health care providers hastily built a temporary mechanism with digital tools to manage the surge. However, they need to build a robust virtual care system to meet the increasing demand for outpatient care. Patients have started expecting to receive adequate healthcare service delivering via technology. 

– While building a robust virtual care mechanism, health care providers make sure that digital health strategies meet two aspects: the system should provide better patient care and an excellent patient experience. 

5 – Losing the revenue (Financial breakdown)

– Between March 1 and June 30, health systems lost around  $202.6 billion. Healthcare infrastructure suffered a considerable loss, resulted in poor healthcare services. 

– IT team of healthcare institutions implemented cloud infrastructure to reduce the IT infrastructure cost and improve the operations.