Electronic Health Reporter

With technology advancing all around the world, the approach to healthcare is also rapidly evolving. As healthcare professionals, there’s a lot to learn from other countries about how to streamline procedures to provide faster and better service. Here are a few innovative ways other parts of the world are taking care of patients.

Australia

Technological development in Australia has seen a quick trend toward home-based health care procedures. The country down under now allows patients to easily monitor and test their health wherever and whenever they please. As Budget Direct reports, such innovations include the oral home-based HIV test. Oral tests for HIV have been viewed with skepticism for some time; however, this simple test, which involves running a swab across the gum-line and then placing it in a solution, has similar accuracy to the other rapid HIV test on the Australian market, which requires a finger prick and blood sample.

Further innovations by scientists in Australia have seen a line of bionic devices that provide on-site diagnostic. Look for smaller and rural hospitals to adapt these devices in the future, as many in Australia already have. Accurate diagnostics can save hospitals thousands in the event they must airlift a patient to a larger, more equipped hospital.

Germany

From automotive technology to healthcare, Germany has a strong reputation for being a pioneer in many industries. The ReinHeart, for example, is an artificial heart that provides a technical alternative to a heart transplant. The ReinHeart has been in development since 2009 and is still in an early stage. The ReinHeart’s pump unit replaces a failed human heart, and the control unit is implantable and powered by an internal battery that can be charged wirelessly through the skin. The user interface is worn with the external batteries on a waistband or belt.

Reliability is a key concern of ReinHeart’s. Once implanted it must run continuously without repair. Due to the long wait time and donor deficit associated with heart transplants, the device is designed to be a new therapy for terminal heart failure and has been tested in a collection of experiments.

China

China’s technological development has been closely linked to mobile apps and devices. When it comes to health care, the country has seen technology that caters to higher mobility and ease of use. Specifically, tech giant Baidu formulated a set of chopsticks that test for food contamination and sends the details back to a linked mobile device or desktop. Assisting in prevention and mobile monitoring, the technology also looks at calorie counting to assist individuals in constant maintenance of their health in relation to the food they’re eating.

Mexico

One of the greatest aspects of technology is the convenience and quick response it provides. MedicallHome is an innovative program based in Mexico that provides specific and detailed telephone-based health care advice. Staffed by paramedics and health care professionals, the service can focus on the specific needs of the patient and allows them to solve any queries quickly.

MedicallHome was ahead of its time when it was first established in 1998. It now serves more than five million people in Mexico, showing how well received its services have been for nearly 20 years. While this solution is not the most tech-focused, it illustrates how simple technologies can be creatively utilized in the health care industry to assist patients quickly and thoroughly.

Healthcare is a complicated, fast-paced and often stressful industry. So why not use technology to make some of these procedures quicker and more user friendly? All around the world, health care professionals are using a variety of different innovative technologies to improve a patient’s experience.