The recent global medical crisis forced people into isolation and even quarantine environments. It also revealed weaknesses in such areas as medical translation and interpretation services that were previously viewed more as a matter of convenience rather than as an absolute necessity.
There is talk today of an imminent second wave of the Coronavirus crisis and further lock-downs and more extensive isolation being put in place to stem the spread of the virus. Is the telehealth industry ready for a new wave? What weaknesses in remote health care remain to be addressed? What does the future of telehealth hold to help not only in times of crisis but in everyday life?
Remote Healthcare, Telehealth, and Medical Interpretation Services
There was a time in the not-so-distant past, and even to this day in many cases, where medical interpretation services are seen as more of a nuisance than they are a real benefit. In the United States, this is especially common with Spanish interpretation but remains a common occurrence that can be effectively resolved with remote medical interpreters and other telehealth solutions. The role of remote medical interpreters should increase in use and importance in the world of telehealth and telemedicine.
The role of the medical interpreter can be exceptionally challenging, especially given the lack of specific knowledge regarding medical terminology. In lieu of a more pleasant sampling, the example here will focus on the specificity of relevant medical terminology that is especially important given the nature of the coronavirus pandemic.
When individuals are gathered in a more informal conversation regarding colds, cases of flu and COVID-19, they may refer to a more generic word like “spit.” In reality, this is not so much a medical term as phlegm, saliva, and mucus, all three of which have a more specific medical meaning, and all three of which are very relevant to a proper diagnosis and treatment, most notably in terms of any potential respiratory disorders such as those produced by the Coronavirus family.
Any time when someone who is not a professional or certified medical interpreter is used, there is an increased risk that the precise medical meaning of the term may not be fully understood in either language, and the incorrect translation will result in a misdiagnosis.
The healthcare sector is the backbone of any economy, without which no nation can survive. For a prosperous country, it is essential to have a more robust health care sector. Hence, more healthy and fit the workforce is, the better the country will run.
However, if you ask your elders about the hospitals and the availability of healthcare facilities in their times, they will say it was not as advanced as today. There used to be fewer healthcare units and limited doctors available for patient treatments. With the evolution of technology, the health care system got better.
Around five decades back, some hospitals with excellent resources and facilities tried to experiment with providing remote care to patients. Fewer hospitals were trying to reach patients in remote areas to offer them healthcare over the telephone.
Thanks to technological advancements, telemedicine has brought a lot of positive changes in health care services. Diseases can attack us anywhere at any time. Some are mild and get a quick fix of treatment, while many are lethal and need a well-thought treatment plan. The world has seen many plagues and pandemic, but the modern epidemic of COVID-19 is new to the whole world. With the outbreak of this pandemic, ill or healthy, everyone has to stay home and avoid going out. Those having on-going treatments for their follow-ups and other medical examinations were a bit worried.
Fortunately, we live in a digitalized era where telemedicine has provided a solution to all those who were concerned about the doctor’s follow-up or medicine prescriptions. Telehealth has made healthcare services easy for people and practitioners; it brings a little bit of ease in their schedules. It has helped many people who were living in remote areas to get better without traveling.
With new technologies and techniques, health care is continuously evolving. With the pandemic affecting millions of lives and lockdown administered throughout the country, doctors and general practitioners prefer to learn about public health management through online mph degree programs. A degree in public health equips you with skills that can help you develop better solutions for the healthcare system.
The following are the seven ways how telemedicine is revolutionizing the healthcare industry:
From rheumatoid arthritis to HIV, the pharmaceutical industry is well on its way to making this a banner year for new drug implementation. Here are just a few exciting breakthroughs for big pharma in 2020.
Hulio Injection for Arthritis and Other Diseases
Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. has proven they are a company that can get significant results. On July 6, the FDA approved Mylan’s Hulio Injection, a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker that reduces the symptoms of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and plaque psoriasis.
Rukobia Extended-Release Tablets for HIV
For some patients who have HIV, there are few treatment options, that is, until now. Those who are resistant to other drugs, Rukobia (fostemsavir) is a first-in-class attachment inhibitor for the treatment of HIV-1 infection. Approved on July 2, 2020, Rukobia is used in combination with other antiretrovirals (ARV) for patients who are resistant to a wide range of therapies, or where safety is a consideration.
Phesgo Injection for Breast Cancer
Unfortunately, even with the best surgical procedures and advanced interventions, some forms of breast cancer have a high likelihood of returning, which is where Phesgo comes in.
It was approved in June 2020 for use in conjunction with other drugs to fight the early stages of breast cancer. It is also used in combination with docetaxel for metastatic breast cancer patients who have not received chemotherapy.
This question initially brings to mind many possibilities such as connection to the latest 5G cellular service, a new super-fast internet provider, or maybe one of the many new energy suppliers jockeying for market share from traditional utility companies.
While all of these might represent legitimate opportunities to improve one’s community, here we are talking about a different concept; specifically, whether your community is ready to have a Connected Community of Care (CCC) to advance whole person health.
The image of a CCC may seem obvious. After all, we all live in communities where we have some connections between hospitals, physician practices, ambulatory care centers, and pharmacies to name just a few. But here we are talking about a broader sense of connected community that includes not just healthcare organizations, but social service organizations, such as schools and civic organizations and community-based organizations (CBOs) like neighborhood food pantries and temporary housing facilities.
A true CCC links together local healthcare providers along with a wide array of CBOs, faith-based organizations and civic entities to help address those social factors, such as education, income security, food access, and behavioral support networks, which can influence a population’s risk for illness or disease.
Addressing these factors in connection with traditional medical care can reduce disease risk and advance whole person care. Such is the case in Dallas, Texas, where the Dallas CCC information exchange platform has been operating since 2012. Designed to electronically bring together local healthcare systems, clinicians, and ancillary providers with over a hundred CBOs, the Dallas CCC provides a real-time referral and communication platform with a sophisticated care management system designed and built by the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) and Pieces Technologies, Inc.
Long before this information exchange platform was implemented, the framers of the Dallas CCC came together to consider whether Dallas needed such a network and whether the potential partners in the community were truly ready to make the commitments needed to bring this idea to fruition.
As more and more communities and healthcare provider entities realize the tremendous potential of addressing the social determinants of health by bringing together healthcare entities and CBOs and other social-service organizations, the question of community readiness for a CCC is being asked much more often. But how do you know what the right answer is?
Before looking at the details of how we might answer this, let’s remember that a CCC doesn’t don’t just happen in a vacuum. It requires belief, vision, commitment? and above all? alignment among the key stakeholders. Every CCC that has formed, including the Dallas CCC, begins with a vision for a healthier community and its citizens.
This vision is typically shared by two or more large and influential key community stakeholders, such as a large healthcare system, school district, civic entity, or social- service organization like the United Way or Salvation Army. Leaders from these organizations often initially connect at informal social gatherings and advance the idea of what if?
These informal exchanges soon lead to a more formal meeting where the topic is more fully discussed and each of the participants articulates their vision for a healthier community and what that might look like going forward. This stage in the evolution of a CCC is perhaps the key step in the transformation process, as while all stakeholders will have a vision, achieving alignment among those visions is no small feat.
Many hopeful CCCs never pass this stage, as the stakeholders cannot come to agreement on a common vision that each can support. For the fortunate few, intrinsic organizational differences can be successfully set aside to allow the CCC to move forward.
By Ken Perez, vice president of healthcare policy, Omnicell, Inc.
Ken Perez
Discussions about the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare often span multiple areas, most commonly about making more accurate diagnoses, identifying at-risk populations, and better understanding how individual patients will respond to medicines and treatment protocols.
To date, there has been relatively little discussion about practical applications of AI to improve medication management across the care continuum, an area this article will address.
The Significance of Medications
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions prescription drugs in the United States? In poll after poll, the high and rising costs of medications are American voters’ top healthcare-related issue.
This concern is well founded. The U.S. spends almost $400 billion a year on medications–$325 billion on a retail basis and about $75 billion for inpatient and outpatient use.
To put the $400 billion in perspective, it is equal to about 11% of total U.S. healthcare expenditures, and it’s one of the top reasons why the U.S. spends much more on healthcare than other industrialized countries.
Medication Management Shortcomings
Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues with the medication management system, broadly defined.
It’s estimated that 20-30% of prescriptions are not even filled, not even picked up at the retail pharmacy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year, adverse drug events result in 1.3 million visits to the emergency department, and of those ED visits, over a fourth, 350,000, result in hospitalizations, which result in significant costs.
Over the past 50 years, much legislation has been passed to regulate and reform the U.S. healthcare system, and this has significantly increased the administrative burden on healthcare provider organizations. As a result, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the United States Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, the number of administrators has grown by 3,200% since 1970, while over the same period, the number of physicians has been relatively flat, in line with population growth. Correspondingly, per research funded by the Physicians Foundation, it is estimated that the average physician and/or his or her staff spends 785 hours per year on quality reporting.
The administrative burden also falls heavily on pharmacists. According to a national survey by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), pharmacists spend over three-fourths of their time on non-clinical activities—mostly manual, administrative processes.
In spite of the massive amount of spending on medications, the medication management system is fraught with errors at multiple steps in the medication-use process, prescriptions are often not filled, and over one-fourth of all hospital readmissions are potentially preventable and medication related.
Everyone involved with healthcare knows how vital IT data is to the medical profession. It is an industry that generates millions of pieces of data via monitors, wearable tech, medical devices, tests, and doctors’ visits each day.
This newfound access to information about our bodies has involved us all like never before in our healthcare. The result of this has been a shift towards more preventative care and more decisions being made based on medical IT data collected on you as an individual.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in numerous unexpected changes in the health sector. The government and the public are looking to the medical field to generate a cure for the virus. At the same time, the health sector is straining to handle a large number of COVID-19 patients and acquire a vaccine. The virus unexpectedly attacked the health sector, resulting in numerous changes. The following are some of the changes that have taken place–and will take place–in the medical field due to the coronavirus.
Wearing PPEs and Masks in Hospitals
Initially, doctors and nurses would only put on white lab coats and a pair of gloves when handling patients. After the coronavirus outbreak, the new norm in hospitals is dressing in PPEs and N95 masks as a precaution measure. More so, the health personnel on the front line have to protect themselves, their families, and the unaffected patients.
A Low Number of Routine Visits
Patients are always visiting the hospital for checkups and screening. The health sector had to reschedule routine visits to reduce the number of people in hospitals. Moreover, the existing number of medical personnel is not enough to conduct numerous hospital services, since most of them have been shifted to help in managing coronavirus patients. The reschedule of routine visits may result in a post-COVID-19 era characterized by an increased number of various illnesses.
COVID-19 has changed the medical world. As the amount of cases continues to rise with more hospitalizations and deaths than ever before, the medical community is scrambling to keep up. How can we protect the health and welfare of our chronically ill patients without putting them at risk for the disease? What about the real possibility of putting ourselves at risk? And then we have to consider mental health patients, who depend on their counselors and group meetings to cope.
Luckily, technology has come to the rescue for many. With the use of telehealth, high tech wearables, and the many applications that patients can now download on their smartphones, we are not completely vulnerable. We just need to think outside-the-box, so to speak. We can provide patients the care that they need and deserve without putting ourselves at undue risk. It’s just going to look way different than the traditional ways we are used to.
This article takes a look at these “high tech” ways of keeping in touch with patients and monitoring their conditions without exposing them or ourselves to COVID-19 or any other highly infectious diseases for that matter.
The healthcare sector is the backbone of any economy, without which no nation can survive. For a prosperous country, it is essential to have a more robust health care sector. Hence, more healthy and fit the workforce is, the better the country will run.
By Adrian Johansen, freelance writer;