Improvements in technology have greatly improved the accessibility to care when it comes to addiction treatment and recovery, and 5G is one of these changes that have been especially beneficial.
Improvements to telehealth, and the possibility of remote care has increased the quality of life for many recovering addicts.
In addition to this, 5G has made connecting to close friends and family, accessing online support groups and additional therapy, and the sending of essential medical information much easier and more reliable.
These improvements have only grown in relevancy as time goes on, and it will only continue to do so. For example, this relevancy is made very evident when considering the current COVID-19 pandemic. Here are 5 ways 5G will improve healthcare.
It improves telehealth
Telehealth is life changing for those living in rural and remote areas because traditional addiction treatment programs are often not available to people living in these parts of the world. 5G will make telehealth more reliable and productive.
Telehealth often involves video conferencing, and 5G will improve the video and audio quality of these online calls. This will make these remote appointments more effective. Other elements like the faster sending of emails, documents, and images will improve telehealth and make it more effective as well. Having mobile devices only enhances this accessibility of 5G, and these devices connected to 5G make attending appointments through telehealth even easier.
It allows for remote care
5G has made it possible to have reliable and safe real time care from the comfort of your own home. This is especially great for those who live in areas with traditional alcohol or drug rehabprograms that are at full capacity and areas where there are no traditional addiction treatment programs available at all. 5G allows for medical staff and therapists to check in with the recovering addict frequently.
“For example, if a person is detoxing from drugs or alcohol, frequent remote care is ideal and much safer than detoxing on one’s own. Online outpatient care is a type of treatment that has rapidly developed since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Mathew Gorman, CEO of Eudaimonia Recovery Homes. “It allows for proper treatment of withdrawal symptoms and early intervention if those symptoms become life-threatening.”
By Dhaval Shah, senior vice president of medical technology, and Neha Vora, healthcare consultant of medical technology, CitiusTech
In the current COVID-19 disrupted world, telehealth has seen unprecedented growth in adoption, as it minimizes the risk of exposure and aligns with the concept of social distancing. This has made healthcare systems accelerate the adoption of these services and also rapidly scale their processes to address the growing need of virtual care, as opposed to in-person visits and services.
And the acceleration is anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future. According to a report by Global Market Insights, the telemedicine market is set to be valued at $175.5 billion by 2026.[1] Today, more than 50% of U.S. hospitals provide telehealth services in some form or other,[2] and to meet the anticipated market growth, many more hospitals will adopt telehealth in the coming years.
Increased demand for remote/virtual care combined with federal and state derestriction has provided the much-needed stimulus for health systems to fast track their digital transformation journey in this space. Studies predict that 30% of all care will be delivered virtually post-pandemic as people start to see telehealth as their first point of contact for urgent care needs.
This brings us to the real question that each healthcare system needs to ask: “Is the current telehealth strategy aligned for the post-COVID world – the new normal?”
Among the many changes the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has wrought, the new prominence of telehealth – healthcare delivered remotely, with provider and patient in different locations – has captured many imaginations. Has this changed the face of healthcare forever? Will visits to doctors’ offices become a thing of the past? Or will telehealth fade back into fringe use once the pandemic ends?
Telehealth before and during the COVID crisis
According to Kaiser Health News, 31% of Americans put off non-essential doctor visits during late March and early April 2020. Nearly a third of those surveyed said this was because they were concerned about contracting the virus. Meanwhile,FAIRHealth’s records show that telehealth claims increased by 5,679% from May 2019 to May 2020 – and urban telemedicine usage rose from .08% to 4.89%.
We can definitely say that COVID has influenced the adoption of telehealth over the last year. Interestingly, though, statistics indicate that telehealth was growing well before the pandemic existed. A study released in March 2019 predictedEurope’s telemedicine market would experience a compound annual growth rate of 16.72% between 2019 and 2024.
Clearly, there was existing interest around telehealth before COVID hit. After the crisis is over, what impact can we expect telehealth to have on medical care?
Telehealth and the future of medicine
SeveralMcKinsey surveys taken in April and May 2020 share interesting insights on the probable future of telehealth after COVID. Briefly, these studies found that:
76% of those surveyed were interested in using telehealth in the future.
74% of telehealth users were highly satisfied with the process.
57% of healthcare providers now view telehealth more favorably and 64% are more comfortable using it.
In addition to positive experiences and growing comfort with telehealth services, we also have to factor in the length of the current pandemic. In many areas, a second wave of infections is being reported; the longer people social distance and limit contact, the more using remote healthcare becomes a habit. And it looks like this habit will continue – not just because people are used to it, but because the same factors that propelled telemedicine forward pre-pandemic are still in force:
The coronavirus pandemic has impacted us profoundly as most nonessential businesses stay closed, and the nations worldwide stay indoors. The hospital staff is under tremendous stress, and all non-critical medical treatments and procedures are on hold until further notice. The pandemic has halted all industrial activity, and the medical field, the frontline warrior against the virus, has been disrupted the most.
Sadly, whether an opportunistic trend or organized crime, critical situations have always given criminals a favorable moment to strike. Owing to their large payouts and increased public interest in it, medical facilities have emerged as a prime target.
Healthcare: A target of organized fraud
While the health sector has always been a dominant area in case of fraud, the situation intensified after the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the biggest battles that the medical facilities needed and still need to combat is the trafficking of substandard and falsified medical products. These items usually included hand sanitizers, test kits, face masks, and other medical equipment. As the demand for such products spiked, criminal activities attempt to take advantage of the public health system’s capacities.
Besides this major threat, healthcare facilities need to prepare their infrastructure for various cyberattacks. The COVID-19 lowered the resistance of many facilities. INTERPOL reports a significant increase in the number of ransomware attacks against companies and organizations that battle the COVID-19 crisis.
Ransomware virus is one of the deadliest infections as it is capable of stealing or encrypting medical data. Then, if facilities want to retrieve the decryption key or prevent the data from being disclosed publicly, they need to pay large ransoms. During this situation, when hospital staff needs to have access to medical records and patient histories, losing all this confidential data can lead to death. Hence, hospitals need to consider whether their infrastructure is capable of resisting a ransomware infection. One of the options is to perform frequent penetration tests. They help organizations discover their weak points and evaluate the resistance against cyberattacks.
Since COVID-19 started causing havoc all over the world earlier this year, things have been tough on the medical industry. There have been massive influxes of people to hospitals with a range of symptoms, hoping to get the best treatment possible.
But, how well equipped is the healthcare system now, and will it be able to withstand a second wave in the current condition it’s in? Right now, that’s debatable, considering not a lot seems to be able to go right when it comes to the pandemic.
The first thing that you’ve got to consider when thinking about how well the healthcare system is equipped is equipment. If you’ve been to hospital recently, or you’ve been reading the news, you might have noticed that one of the main concerns is that there isn’t enough equipment. Keeping patients and staff safe is supposed to be one of the top priorities, but you could be forgiven for thinking it isn’t.
Even if you take out things like masks and special measures for COVID-19 specifically, there was still a lack of equipment before this. If anything, this has gotten worse since the virus hit due to needing more than ever before.
A recent Wall Street Journalarticle pointed to a biased algorithm widely used in hospitals that unfairly prioritized white patients over black ones when determining who needed extra medical help.
While AI has been cited as a data-driven technology that doesn’t make decisions based on emotions, but on actual facts – the reality is that the facts can be misleading.
In the above example, race wasn’t a deliberate factor in how the AI algorithm reached its decision. It actually appears to have used predictive analytics based on patients’ medical spending to forecast how sick patients are.
Yet, the problem is that black patients have historically incurred lower healthcare costs than white patients with the same conditions, so the algorithm put white patients in the same category (or higher) than black patients whose health conditions required much more care
Bias is inherent in a lot of things we do and often, we just don’t realize it. In this case, the data assumed that people who paid more for services were the sickest. As illustrated, we have to be considerate of the data we use to train algorithms, Cost of services or amount paid shouldn’t be information we use to determine who is sicker than another.
In another example, if skin-cancer-detection algorithms are typically trained on images of light-skinned patients, they would be less accurate when used on dark-skinned patients, and could miss important signs of skin cancer. The data must be inclusive to provide the best results.
While AI can accelerate disease diagnoses, bring care to critical patient populations, predict hospital readmissions, and accurately detect cancer in medical images, the example illustrates the caveat: AI bias –whether because of a lack of diverse data, or the wrong type of data – exists in healthcare and it can lead to social injustice, as well as harm to patients.
In addition to racial bias, unchecked algorithms can cause other types of bias as well, based on gender, language or genealogy. In fact, according to IBM research, there are more than 180 human biases in today’s AI systems, which can affect how business leaders make their decisions.
As an example of gender bias in healthcare, for many years cardio-vascular disease was considered a man’s disease, so information was available based on data collected from men only.
This could be fed into a chatbot and lead a woman to believe that pain in her left arm was less urgent – possibly a sign of depression – with no need to see a doctor right away. The consequences of this oversight could be devastating.
By Luke Wilson, vice president of intelligence, 4iQ.
Luke Wilson
In the wake of COVID-19, my firm, 4iQ, observed an increase in a host of cyber-attacks. This uptick did not come as a surprise, given cybercriminals typically exploit uncertain situations, but it was a wake-up call for organizations that were in the midst of transitioning to full-time remote work.
As the country begins to reopen, we cannot let our guards down – from preventing the spread of this pandemic, or from persistent cybercriminals.
Phishing campaigns were well-documented over these past few months. Scammers spoofed credible institutions, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to lure victims into downloading malware or to capture personal or financial information.
These incidents were so widespread that government agencies, including the CDC, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published resources on these COVID-19-related scams to alert the public and offer tips on how to spot suspicious activity. Individuals were also at risk of having their identities spoofed, not just organizations.
Cybercriminals leveraged the accounts of executives with public-facing email accounts, usually via keyloggers or phishing attacks, to conduct fraudulent wire transfer payments.
As COVID-19 continued to spread, so did the number of registered suspicious coronavirus-themed domains. We analyzed over 2,400 domain names with COVID-19 themes and found that the most common terms were “virus,” “coronavirus,” and “corona.”
We also saw particular interest in protection gear, test kits, vaccines, and domains that tracked reported coronavirus cases as well as the status of the infected and cured. While some of these sites might have been legitimate, many were scams to distribute malware, inflict financial fraud, or trick victims into purchasing fraudulent COVID-19-related products, such as “vaccines,” which haven’t been evaluated by regulators for safety and effectiveness.
You may feel safe inside your house from the polluted and unhealthy air outside, but are you? Your house isn’t entirely sealed off from the outdoor air, which means all those pollutants/allergens are easily creeping inside.
One of the ultimate defenses you can use against this unsafe air is an air purifier. In this article, we’ll discuss all the reasons why air purifiers are important for your health.
How Air Purifiers Benefit Your Health
People often undermine the importance of using air purifiers. The truth is, they’re essential for maintaining a healthy living environment. Here’s why:
Asthma Triggers
Asthma is a potentially fatal and serious condition, and you must make sure there aren’t any triggers present inside the house.
But problems arise because a lot of stuff can trigger asthma episodes: pet dander, mold spores, smoke- the list continues. Hence, the only way you can overcome this problem is by using an air purifier, which sucks in the air and filters out harmful particles.
Allergens
Apart from asthma attacks, polluted air can cause different allergies that negatively impact the respiratory system, eyes, skin, etc. Statistics show that over 50 million Americans suffer from allergies each year.
So, what causes these allergies? Dust, pollen, pets, mold spores, and a lot of different stuff. These are things that you don’t have much control over – you can’t stop tiny particles from traveling into the air inside. Unless, of course, you use air purifiers.
An air purifier has various filters and cleaning mechanisms that help eliminate harmful allergens in your house. In fact, they’ve proven to be effective in creating a healthy breathing environment. This is why households with family members susceptible to allergies should use air purifiers.
