As people worldwide become more and more aware of various health issues related to obesity and poor lifestyle choices, fitness has made its way in their lives in one way or another. Whether it be walking in the park or doing high-intensity cardio, everybody wants to be as fit as they can be.
Because of such a rise, there has been an increasing demand for individuals in the health and fitness sector. When it comes to careers in the health and fitness sector, we often think about personal trainers, gym instructors, and yoga instructors. However, these are not the only career paths individuals can take if they wish to apply their trade in such a field.
If you are someone who is a fitness freak and wants to try their hand in the field of health and fitness, then you have come to the right place. Today, in this article, we will share some health and fitness career opportunities that might be perfect for you. Some of these career opportunities are listed as follows:
Nutritionist
Following a good diet is an integral component of having good health. When you work as a nutritionist, you will be responsible for creating dietary schedules for your clients. These can either be to help a client lose weight or to avoid health-related issues. Nutritionists also design diet plans for clients, such as athletes, who want to get in shape to perform the best they can.
To become a nutritionist, there are a number of certifications you can pursue, you need to complete a four-year degree in nutrition and acquire a state license. Nutritionists usually work at their clinics, schools, universities, colleges, or professional sports teams. The average annual salary of a nutritionist is around $26,000.
If you’re a wheelchair user you’ll know that every day presents different challenges that you need to
overcome. From mental health issues to managing your pain and health to other tests such as
discrimination, loneliness and those overly helpful people who think they’re doing the right thing.
You may also have issues with your finances and if you’re still waiting for your social security
disability payment to come through you may find yourself under a lot of fiscal pressure right now.
Looking for signs your disability claim will be approved? Click the link to find out more.
Staying safe whilst you’re using your wheelchair can feel a little daunting. With so many hazards to
consider, sometimes just getting out and enjoying the fresh air can seem like hard work. Here we’ll
look at some great advice for getting out and about and how you can stay safe in your wheelchair.
While some physicians are beginning to see patient visits return to pre-COVID-19 volume, many independent practices are still struggling. In fact, nearly nine in 10 practice owners or partners that responded to a recent survey indicated they were concerned about the future of their practices, and more than half of all respondents (54%) were “very concerned.”
Months of reduced activity, particularly at practices that suspended elective procedures in the spring, have taken a heavy toll on revenue. As a result, many practices are now compelled to take stopgap measures to contain costs.
High unemployment rates continue to create hardships that can strain patients’ finances. Even an indirect impact, such as a job loss sustained by another member in the household, can affect a patient’s willingness to seek needed treatment or impair their ability to pay for medical services.
To ensure patients can get access to the care they need, as well as their organization’s financial longevity, each health care provider needs to reassess their business strategy with an eye towards improvement in operations. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed many areas of inefficiencies that were already affecting revenues before the pandemic began.
Invest in operational efficiencies for better revenue management
Today, practices have less room for inefficiency and must take decisive steps to invest in technology that will drive increased efficiency at lower costs. Imperatives for a practice thrown into disarray by changes related to COVID-19 are to stabilize the practice by taking better control of the business process. This includes steps to strengthen contingency plans to minimize disruptions and reduce patient liability during the reimbursement lifecycle of the patient, while ensuring the safety of patients and staff during these challenging times.
Reducing patient liability is both a strategy and a desired outcome the practice should aim for as it fine-tunes its management of the revenue cycle, which extends from the patient’s initial appointment through successful payment collection.
The practice can reduce increases in aged receivables by greater attention to pre-visit efforts. Performing eligibility checks and verification of benefits sets expectations and provides improved financial transparency for the patient which sets the stage for a smoother patience experience.
Telehealth is a $2.6B industry and has grown more than 25% since 2015. The global COVID-19 pandemic has switched telehealth’s use and acceptance into overdrive, and nearly every healthcare discipline is utilizing some form of telehealth platforms as part of their clinical offerings. As the pandemic brought life to a stand-still, industries and employees were placed into one of two categories: those who provided essential services like grocery store staff, doctors, and emergency medical personnel and those who were deemed non-essential.
Non-essential businesses were ordered to shut down all operations while government officials figured out the next best steps for the safety of its citizens. Initially, physical therapy and other non-clinical medical professions were deemed non-essential. This changed when the Department of Homeland Security, along with state governments and healthcare officials, deemed physical therapy an essential healthcare service that should continue to treat its patients.
This acknowledgment placed the physical therapy sector in an interesting predicament. On one hand, many municipalities had issued stay-at-home orders. Even with the re-categorization of physical therapy as an essential healthcare service, many patients simply feared leaving their homes and chose to postpone much-needed physical therapy appointments until the virus was contained. This dilemma forced physical therapy practitioners to explore the telehealth platform as a way to continue treating patients and to create a much-needed revenue stream for the health of the practice.
COVID-19 Triggers Regulatory Changes
The telehealth industry was already changing dramatically due to COVID-19. To help telehealth services become more widely available, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma relaxed HIPAA restrictions that had previously limited telemedicine as a patient care option. The deregulations included the ability of physicians to treat patients across state lines without becoming licensed in that particular state and ushered in the development of IT infrastructures that did not meet compliance or regulatory parameters established by HIPPA laws. Lastly, a rapid introduction and approval of dozens of new billing codes were issued to itemize and enable medical professionals to bill Medicare for telehealth services.
One of the most significant challenges in the medical industry is the aging population. Taking care of seniors means using many different methods to ensure compliance. Seniors are often tricky to take care of, as many of them suffer from age-related diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).
This is why it is important to think of advanced methods to make sure their safety remains a top priority. Among the most effective methods today is the use of technology, such as medical apps. Here are some of the top medical apps that are best for seniors:
1. 5Star Medical Alert
5Star Medical Alert is a medical app that helps seniors get immediate medical help from emergency responders employed by 5Star agents. The benefit of this app is that it serves as a personal safety app with agents available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The app comes with a GPS that can track its users, so it is easier to find an individual in case of an emergency. The app also has a conference call functionality, so seniors can still connect with their family during transport. The app is available for download on both iOS and Android phones.
2. MediSafe
If you want a medical app that is highly dedicated to senior users, MediSafe is a great option. Its functionality is compatible with the needs of our elderly loved ones. It has a very user-friendly interface that allows users to program automatic drug intake reminders. It also comes with an online medical box that sends an alarm about the medication schedule. The app is great for those with memory problems to make sure they don’t miss out on any of the medications.
MediSafe can also be synchronized with HealthKit to record health readings such as pulse rate, blood pressure, blood glucose levels, temperature, and weight. All these results can be automatically shared with medical providers to warn them of any sudden spikes. It also sends prescription refills before medications are depleted. What sets this app apart is its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance.
As the years go by and the body begins to enter its old age, it’s only natural for aches and pains to begin to appear. Many older people will begin to notice issues with their joints, in particular, and the hip is one of the most commonly affected areas, requiring treatment.
More than 175,000 people undergo hip replacement surgery every year for a variety of reasons, and this surgery can be life-changing, helping to alleviate pain and suffering, help with movement, and prevent further damage being done to the hip joint itself.
With a hip replacement or implant, damaged or diseased parts of the joint are removed or smoothed out, replaced or covered over with pieces of metal, plastic, or ceramic that mimic the way the joint functions. Studies show that this surgery can help people live longer and massively improve their quality of life.
As with other areas of medicine, we’ve seen big advancements in how hip replacements work as time goes by, leading to more successful surgeries and better results for patients. Some risks still exist and the process isn’t perfect, by any means, but great strides have been made, as shown below.
Modern Healthcare is stuck in two worlds: the digital and the paperwork one. Due to the advent of particularly strict measures, and thanks to the huge development of the last years in technology as well, OCR is being used more in Healthcare organizations world-wide. Advanced, powerful OCR solution will allow you to save time and be more efficient when creating, processing, and digitizing various documents; you can scan paper documents, especially medical records, for further editing and archiving or sharing with colleagues.
OCR: how does it work?
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, created in 1977 by Jonathan Bush and Todd Park. It is a useful and powerful technology that allows the recognition of texts inside images, scanned documents, and photos, and to convert them into machine-readable text. It is important to note that the recognized documents look just like the original, with the same layout and organization.
By helping healthcare organizations to achieve their paperless stage we noticed several benefits in regards to reduced time and cost, errors, easier availability and management of medical records; in addition, since document privacy and security is a huge concern, with electronic documents access becomes strictly controlled.
Let us have a brief look on how an OCR works. Typically, after a first analysis of the text, the software has a pre-processing phase in which it attempts to make the chosen document more clear and easier to be read. After this second operation, based on the use of an algorithm, the OCR solution will perform text recognition by choosing every single character and comparing it with a set of pattern images. The accuracy of the process may be increased if a lexicon – a list of words that may occur in the document – is added into the software as well.
OCR in Healthcare
Even if OCR in the medical field is not different from OCR used in other types of business, the workflow, clinical content varies widely among physicians, so the conversion process from paper to digital records remains slow. Recent advances in hardware and OCR technology, as we present in our product DocRecognizer, eliminated all other logistic problems, such as copying and editing.
It is important to note that some OCR solutions, not all of them still, are compliant with FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) Standards Apps in exchanging Healthcare information digitally. As the data are collected, it must be done in a structured and standardized way; FHIR aims to simplify this using a rigorous mechanism for exchanging data.
There are very real benefits from using OCR in Healthcare organizations, as it could help digitalize clinical trial documents, patient reports, prescription slips or receipts, and lab notebook from clinical trials. A major focus on efficiency, cost and time reduction is the main benefit, as it allows physicians to reduce paperwork and increase care and productivity. By combining electronic data with the already existing patient’s information, records, lab results, health providers noticed an increased accuracy and velocity in the process, not to mention the cost savings that hospitals favour. For example, scanning and recognizing documents with the help of our tool DocRecognizer will lead to decreasing manager’s time up to 75%.
Powerful tools can process up to 250,000 documents everyday with an average length of 2 or 3 pages, thus enabling a broader range of data, ensuring that important patient’s information reaches doctors faster and efficiently. Also, the fact that they will be stored in a centralized cloud, allows the organization to have a precise digital archive storage, making it easier to find a given file; differently from scanned images, OCR documents allow a quicker keyword research, that would be otherwise not possible by having a simple, plain image.
Also, medical professionals can work remotely and send data online to a centralized OCR software, as the format allows a quick transmission of the documents from clinics to clinics. These upgrades have been shown to be essential, during our experience this year in COVID-19 Epidemia.
Usage of electronic health record and OCR software has been achieved in a certain number of countries, during recent years. For example, WHO lists Malaysia, where two hospitals have already gone paperless, Korea as 11 hospitals implemented fully Electronic Medical Records use, and China where several hospitals have successfully introduced some new technologies. Other countries are also developing electronic health records in one form or another with successful implementation. The USA is one of the most invested countries in digitalization, and for sure this puts it in an advantageous position.
In the last years, several studies on OCR systems in Healthcare organizations have been performed, to prove and demonstrate its accuracy. A study has been conducted in Wishard memorial Hospital’s Pediatric Outpatient Clinic, located in Indianapolis. One hundred and fifty typed paper forms were sent by the clinic staff, as result the OCR software was able to recognize the characters present more than 95% confidence 58% of the time.
Another interesting study has been performed on OCR and classification of pathology reports. The system was found to recognise scanned pathology reports up to 99.12%-character accuracy and 98.95% word accuracy.
Both studies show that OCR can be useful in regard to single patient’s records; but the great advantage is to create clinical registries, that can be unique and useful tools for national epidemiological and health services research. For example, the National Cancer Institute provides an excellent source of information of cancer epidemiology in the United States; genomic association projects rely on clinical registries to have detailed phenotypic information on many patients.
Conclusions
New technologies such as OCR solutions are currently in use by various organizations, but it’s becoming more and more relevant in the Medical field. Widespread use of electronic medical records could bring benefits to the Healthcare system in a variety of ways, since having patient’s data stored in a standardized form could help physicians in better care management and treatment of diseases. Based on all the above analysis, and our profound understanding of the medical domain, DocRecognizer is the preferred solution by delivering high quality values for healthcare organizations.
References:
Biondich PG, Overhage JM, Dexter PR, Downs SM, Lemmon L, McDonald CJ. A modern optical character recognition system in a real world clinical setting: some accuracy and feasibility observations. Proc AMIA Symp. 2002;56-60.
Zuccon G, Nguyen AN, Bergheim A, Wickman S, Grayson N. The impact of OCR accuracy on automated cancer classification of pathology reports. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2012;178:250-6. PMID: 22797049.
Note: Please, if you decide to publish this article, let us know about it by sending an e-mail to our marketing specialist Anna (avassenko@issart.com) as our CEO can miss a letter from your side. Any feedback from you is also valuable for us.
In the age of COVID-19, the role of technology in supporting senior care has perhaps never been more important or apparent. Telemedicine is increasingly proving its power to ensure continuity and quality of care from the safety and security of the patients’ home.
But today’s technology is about far more than just protecting seniors and the vulnerable from potential exposure to the virus. Now, more than ever, technologies are being developed to optimize patient care and to support seniors who wish to age in place, living out their golden years independently at home.
As promising as these technologies may be, however, it’s not all roses and champagne. The reality is technology is developing so quickly that it can be hard to keep up, particularly from a moral and ethical perspective. We’re only just beginning to understand the implications of this tech invasion. It might prove to be a tremendous help but also a tremendous harm for some seniors.
Before we jump too quickly on the technology bandwagon when it comes to senior care, there are some ethical considerations we need to keep in mind.
Why It Matters
The simple fact is that today’s technologies are making it easier than ever for seniors to remain in their own homes without putting their health and safety at risk. Thanks to an array of new smart technologies, caregivers can remotely monitor their loved ones from secure portals that can be accessed on most any mobile device.
The devices allow caregivers to monitor the physical activity in the home through motion detectors, including the ability to identify potentially significant changes in activity patterns. Wearables can even remotely track users’ vital data, such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, or sleep quality. Best of all, caregivers are able to receive immediate alerts when monitors detect an emergency, such as a fall or a medical issue.
Not only that, but caregivers can also use smart systems to emulate the kind of continuous care seniors would traditionally receive at an assisted living facility. They can monitor and remotely control the home’s temperatures, for example.
And, for seniors who are experiencing cognitive decline, caregivers can set up medication reminders — with the medication’s name and proper dosage — on their loved one’s smartphone, tablet, or PC. Since memory-related medication non-compliance is a particularly common, and particularly dangerous, health challenge for seniors, this may well be the key to your loved one’s health and longevity.
While some physicians are beginning to see patient visits return to pre-COVID-19 volume, many independent practices are still struggling. In fact, nearly nine in 10 practice owners or partners that responded to 
