Thought Leadership
Key Components of Connected Medicine
What is patient-centric health care?
Connected medicine brings the focus of health care back to the patient, and is characterized by a combination of key components that enable patient-centric health care: total cost of care, electronic health records (EHR)/data, communications and cultural change.
Health Care
Health care is no longer seen in isolation – it is the total cost of care combined with the practice of medicine. The total cost of care must embrace primary care, preventative care, well-care, end of life care, and adjuncts to procedural care that decrease costs. Health care can no longer be seen as a hospitalization or office visit in isolation, it must be viewed across a spectrum of locations, diseases or technologies.
Communication
Communication is traditionally viewed as a doctor speaking to the patient in the office or at the bedside. In the global environment of technology communication is in the cloud, and is more powerful than ever before. Traditional "phone calls" turn into chat based conversations. Devices can automatically communicate critical lab values to wireless phones at the bedside. Emails, social media, and tablets are the common currency of patients and families keeping in touch. Health care must imminently push communications in to the cloud, meet our patients who are already there, and embrace the power of this new landscape. Many aspects of access to care and the quality of care will depend upon it.
EHR/Data
EHRs are in the spotlight right now, and not for the right reason. The focus is on EHRs which many providers admit are complex, difficult to integrate and do not communicate freely between systems. In many ways, EHRs represent a tremendous opportunity for health care, and one that could engage patients like never before. The value in an EHR is that data is turned into information, which is transformed into knowledge, which changes behavior. In the future, dashboards and artificial intelligence will transform our industry into one based on outcomes, real data, and quality that we must embrace.
Cultural Change
Today’s health care is a complex, team-driven, and technology laden series of intricate steps that mean that coordination, communication, and outcomes are critical. In the modern era of cloud base technology, health care can use cloud based communication, mHealth, telemedicine, and data to make health care virtual, accessible, and most importantly patient focused. To accomplish this, cultural change at the most basic level will have to be the norm. We must return to our roots of focusing on the patient (and thus the population) and realize times have changed, the opportunity to provide better health care has changed, and most importantly that the patients have changed.