Tag Archive for: health care

How Will the Medical Industry Change in the Coming Years?

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Under the influence of technology, healthcare is becoming a more complex system. By introducing features such as: 3D-printing, Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and VR/AR, it is critical to acquaint yourself with the latest healthcare developments to understand and control digital healthcare technologies. 

There are a lot of factors at play in the modifications of healthcare. Having a profound understanding of this growing intricacy will facilitate comprehension of what’s to come. With the help of USMLE prep, the medical community keeps growing with the addition of new students and ideas.

Which Factors Contribute to Change in the Medical Industry

According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), justification of the development of healthcare is implicated by several factors such as:

  • Health insurance coverage: While insurance coverage is an assurance of more medical services, modern trends of insurers and employers place a fiscal obligation on patients in the form of deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance, which brings about slow growth rates
  • Healthcare product and service prices: It is evident that the increase in pricing of medical products and services has impacted healthcare spending growth
  • Demographics and patient idiosyncrasies: Variations in the health status and age of the population significantly affects how much is spent on healthcare
  • Market capacity: Healthcare providers are known for consolidating at a rapid rate. Incorporating others gives a more significant market power over insurers
  • Technology: This is one factor that has the most critical effect on healthcare change, according to MedPAC

 How Technology Will Better Healthcare

In the medical world, digital technology will result in extraordinary achievements. It could help revamp unsustainable healthcare systems into more sustainable ones. Technology is shaping healthcare in the following ways:

Robotics

This is one of the rapidly growing healthcare fields. Its developments vary from robot companions through surgical robots until pharmabotics, exoskeletons, and disinfectant robots. In 2019 Europe saw its first exoskeleton-aided surgery that enabled a tetraplegic man to control an exoskeleton with his brain. These sci-fi suits have many more applications that help both the patient and the caregiver.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence has the absolute potential to completely redesign healthcare. AI algorithms can design treatment plans, mine medical records, and develop drugs faster than any medical professional on the healthcare palette.

3D-Printing

3D-printing is capacitated to give rise to miracles in all facets of healthcare. We can print: artificial limbs, bio tissues, blood vessels, pills, amongst other things, with its help.

Healthcare Trackers, Wearables, and Sensors

This equipment is excellent for getting to understand ourselves better and reestablish control over our individual lives. These devices help you manage your: stress levels, weight, cognitive capabilities, and overall fit and energetic level. The real advantage of these tech-fueled appliances is that it centralizes the patient’s care.

Augmented Reality

Users of augmented reality do not lose touch with reality, and it ingrains information into the eyesight as fast as possible. These unique aspects allow AR to become a driving force in therapy for the receivers and providers of healthcare.

Medical Tricorder

As far as instant solutions are concerned, this gadget is considered every medic dream for an almighty and omnipotent device. It is a handheld device that enables you to diagnose and analyze every disease by scanning a patient.

Nanotechnology

We are on the brink of a nanomedicine era. Soon, nanodevices and nanoparticles will be critical; tiny surgeries, drug delivery systems, or cancer treatment.

Revolutionizing Drug Development

The procedure of formulating new drugs is long and expensive. There are techniques to enhance drug development with designs ranging from silico trials to artificial intelligence. New strategies and technologies are already dominating the pharmaceutical landscape and will continue to do so in years to come.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is altering the lives of patients and also physicians. It is possible that in the future, we will watch surgeries as if you wielded the scalpel, or you could travel home or to any other part of the world from your hospital bed.

Something to Think About

Technology is becoming more and more rooted in medicine, and it is essential to have an idea of the future methods of implementing healthcare with digital health on the rise.

Tackling Medicine’s ‘Taboo’ Subjects

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Many people feel reticent to speak about their personal medical problems and for 3% of Americans, the problem is so extreme that they feel they cannot speak to a doctor at all. While most concerns lead to nothing serious, there will be occasions where an inability to speak up can lead to further problems. Empowering people to feel confident is important, and there are stages to breaking down the barriers to this.

Improving Awareness

One important step to creating a safer environment for speaking freely is through improving awareness over conditions. Simply put, there are almost no conditions that significant numbers of people won’t have experienced and that doctors won’t see as run of the mill. Diseases concerning sensitive parts of the body and, similarly, venereal disease, are a good example of this, with literally millions being diagnosed every year according to the CDC.Despite this, studies have shown that many men and women are reluctant to discuss their symptoms with doctors.Teaching awareness of these sorts of facts, and outlining how nobody is going to judge, is an important base layer.

Getting Information Out There

Part of the reasons some people will refuse to approach a doctor is through fear of diagnosis, or of invasive diagnostic processes. A great way to combat this is through having as much medical information available online as possible. Services like Mayo Clinic and Healthline have done a lot to aid this in recent years, but more work can be done, especially with more obscure conditions.

De-Stigmatizing

Most crucial is the process of de-stigmatizing all illness. Regardless of the cause, condition or outcome, illness remains the same and should be treated with sensitivity. The effect of stigma on illness is clearly felt. Anonymous polls of men by the NCHS found that 10% of men had experienced feelings of anxiety or depression, but less than half had sought treatment. This fear of stigma has led to men being 3.5x more at risk of suicide than women. De-stigmatizing is key, both for mental health and for conditions across the board.

Illness should never be something to be ashamed or scared of broaching the subject of. Instead, it should be something that people feel confident and free to talk about with a doctor, with no worry of abuse or shame. Through awareness, dispersing information and tackling stigma, society as a whole can create an environment in which people of all ages are happy to pursue their medical issues.

Resources:

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2014/07/01/how-to-overcome-extreme-fear-of-doctors