The coming together of technology and healthcare over the last decade has changed the face of healthcare, and one outcome has been the empowering of healthcare providers to administer care remotely. The ongoing transformation of healthcare to a tech-driven digital avatar gained tremendous importance during the past year and a half as it helped to connect patients with doctors even in the face of challenges such as lockdowns and social distancing that impacted access. The adoption has been supported by increased deployment and development of technologies that make digital healthcare convenient and cost-effective.
Changing lifestyles have led to a rise in the prevalence of chronic disease such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Digital Health has been especially beneficial to patients with non-communicable diseases that require constant monitoring. In these cases, remote monitoring through m-health technologies and review of data from digital tools and wearables have changed the way chronic diseases can be managed. Connected health has changed the way that patients interact with healthcare and healthcare systems, while also changing the approach from acute and reactive to proactive and preventive.
Digital Health that includes Telemedicine, Remote Patient Monitoring and mHealth is set for exponential growth in the near future. Digital healthcare market in India stood at US$ 116.61 billion in 2018 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 27.41% to US$ 485.43 billion by 2024. The Government of India also established the National Digital Health Mission to provide the necessary support for integration of digital health infrastructure in the country.
However, there are challenges to be addressed and overcome in the implementation and integration of digital health by healthcare providers. These include issues of security and interoperability between disparate healthcare organizations, lack of bandwidth leading to low image resolution and video quality that is not adequate for healthcare applications, access to technical support in case of any problems, difficulty in integrating with the organisational culture, and lack of last mile access to providers in remote areas.
It is here that technology platforms provide a connected health ecosystem for healthcare providers that address the challenges with regard to digital interfaces and connected devices to facilitate integration. These platforms help healthcare providers desire to take a virtual leap into the digital health space. These platforms also take away the need for healthcare providers to set up IT systems with servers/data centres and IT professionals. Using cloud and mobile-based technology, these technology platforms are helping providers to adopt a new digital health model, overcoming challenges of integration and interoperability.
One such telehealth platform, Connect2MyDoctor, has been developed by Neev Labs. Connect2MyDoctor provides a comprehensive virtual platform to complement how people access and experience healthcare around the world. The platform enables conventional healthcare providers to add a digital health dimension to healthcare delivery with a secure, convenient, intuitive and cost-effective platform to conduct HIPAA-compliant telehealth consultations with their patients.
The Connect2MyDoctor platform enables healthcare providers to deliver across the TeleHealth universe including On-demand care connecting care seekers to specialists across audio/video between two or more locations; Hub-and-spoke connect allowing specialty care consults between large tertiary care centres and smaller rural hospitals; In-patient care with the ability for care providers to consult with patients admitted in the hospital in isolation zone or in regular care environments; Home Care that permits healthcare staff to deliver rich care experience at patient homes even remotely; and Remote Patient Monitoring that lets providers at a different location review medical data from wearable devices in another location.
The platform ensures data privacy and security with data hosted in the country as per data residency rules, all data transfer on HTTPS with end-to-end encryption, 2048-bit SSL certification for encryption in transit, and AES-256 data encryption as per industry standard. Connect2MyDoctor is also HIPAA and GDPR Compliant and ISO 27001 : 2013 certified.
Connect2MyDoctor lets healthcare providers collect payments in over 150 currencies all over the world. It works across web, mobile, Android and iOS. Launched in 2016, Connect2MyDoctor works with multi-speciality hospitals in India and the rest of Asia, Middle East and Azerbaijan. Connect2MyDoctor has seen patients from over 15+ countries mainly using the platform for triage care, second opinion, and consultation before travel and for follow up visits.
Headquartered in Melbourne, Connect2MyDoctor have their India operations in Bengaluru. As India enters a post-COVID phase, Connect2MyDoctor is poised to support Indian healthcare providers to make the transition to a future with connected healthcare!
By Pramod Kutty, Co-Founder & CEO, Connect2MyDoctor
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