Health capital is of enormous importance for better financial outcomes, increased happiness and extended life expectancy. Health technology has emerged as a new field in healthcare, serving to improve healthcare processes and efforts to improve people’s health using technology.
HealthTech is a rapidly growing industry with a potential symbiotic relationship between health and technology. This is not a new phenomenon. However, advances in medical research now mean that the role of technology in healthcare continues to grow in substantial and exponential ways. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish where health ends and technology begins.
This strong relationship between the two will be the foundation for many economic and social changes in healthcare over the next several years, especially on the African continent. The technology has some clinical health implications for healthcare patients. The most important of these is the impact of technology on the fundamental nature of communication and data exchange. This potentially impacts all areas of healthcare and at its core, changes the way providers and patients communicate.
Tech can now automate sending appointments and reminders. It enables telemedicine, which changes face-to-face encounters to virtual encounters between patients and providers. These concepts are just scratching the surface of healthcare technology, and it’s becoming increasingly simple for patients to access information through mobile media. With the automation of record keeping and the increasing presence of wearable health tracking/monitoring tools, patients will be able to provide more comprehensive data about themselves to their providers to enable informed medical decisions.
This concept of increased patient-driven information availability and sharing is at the heart of what health technology is trying to improve and change. A more informed patient with more complete data can engage in a more proactive way of proactive care and decision making about their health care needs. This has the potential to move the healthcare system from its current reactive nature to a future form of care that is predictive and personalized to better serve the needs of individual patients.
HealthTech has the potential to transform and disrupt current healthcare practices and the healthcare system as a whole. Disruption of current practices will initially cause positive and negative resistance. As technology becomes more affordable and accessible, positive outcomes will include automation of tasks, greater mobility of healthcare workers. This renewed flexibility and resources will help alleviate and better manage the growing demand and complexity of the health consumer. Positive outcomes may also include minimizing or preventing adverse events and improving the targeting of the right health services to the right people. This will not only benefit consumers and healthcare providers but also the overall cost of the healthcare system.
HealthTech refers to the use of information and communication technologies in the health sector. HealthTech is revolutionizing the healthcare system and the way healthcare is delivered, experienced and evaluated. It includes a wide range of digital health, eHealth, mobile health and telemedicine practices. This includes and is not limited to healthcare software, online tools and mobile devices. These technologies allow consumers to access a myriad of health care-related information and connect in new ways with their health care providers. The use of HealthTech is believed to provide a more efficient, higher quality and cost-effective health care.
Overall, there is no doubt that HealthTech is an important tool in changing the approach to healthcare from the server to the method used to achieve a solution for various medical conditions. Global indications for HealthTech are increasing and with intense competition among software providers, there is an optimistic view that HealthTech will provide the best cost-effective solution to improve a patient’s quality of life and health.
The issue of method error occasionally poses a risk to the patient. Various data elements have shown methods using HealthTech, such as the assessment of bone health using peripheral X-ray, which has a higher accuracy in diagnosing osteoporosis compared to standard X-ray, or a concise detailed analysis of the dimensions of the lesion using the solution IT compared to manual assessment in case of need. to make a decision to treat cardiovascular disease, it is enough to prove that technology is a doctor’s friend in untangling a treatment for a patient. In the end, it saves time in providing a solution with minimal margin for error. Note that a solution or treatment for a patient is usually aimed at the best possible outcome. Failure to do so may result in frustration on the part of the patient and likely a loss for the service provider.
This last factor provides the superior value of eHealth solutions compared to the old methods. Here is probably the help from the advanced technology that suggests the most effective way possible so that the preferred exploration in it is sufficient instead of burdening one with abundant methods to get the same result. This is demonstrated in the study detailing the most likely optimized self-monitoring of blood pressure measurement using HealthTech, which costs less compared to existing conventional methods. Suffice it to mention the topic of health care that is constantly evolving with the times, be it medical personnel or environment. A technology that helps better manage a medical condition for a patient has a higher acceptance rate compared to a therapeutic solution that was the product of rapid research.
In 2019, the government of Ghana signed a contract with Zipline to use drones to facilitate blood distribution across the country for a period of four years at a cost of $12 million.
Zipline is in its fourth year since the contract was awarded, the Africa Center for Digital Transformation is interested to find out if the drone delivery reviews were worth the investment from the Ghanaian government, perhaps the good people of Ghana are just as keen to find out too.
However, the initiative of drone deliveries in healthcare delivery in Ghana was bold, precise and commendable. However, a single act of drone delivery is not enough, Ghana needs an entire digital transformation of its health delivery systems because its health capital depends on it.
About the Author? Kwesi Atuahene, Head of Communications, Africa Center for Digital Transformation [ACDT]
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