The Grim Winter Ahead Didn't Have To Be This Way. We Have The Means To Take "Sickness Care" To Health Care

Winter is a miserable time in the majority of our hospitals and this winter will be no different. It's time we rolled out digital solutions designed to transform our medical industry from "sickness care" to Healthcare. With existing technologies, we can move the sector from diagnosing and treating illness as it happens to preventing the onset of disease by consistently maintaining patients' well-being.

This will not only be beneficial to the population, it will also take a huge amount of strain from the shoulders of medical staff. According to a recent study, 40% of nurses and 23.8% of physicians plan to exit their practice in the next 2 years. And who can blame them?

The healthcare sector cannot continue the same way it has for over a century.

Society has evolved drastically in the last 100 years and the population is ready for the next evolution of health care. 80% of patients want to interact with their healthcare providers using a smartphone. Being able to do so gives the patient more autonomy over their well-being, they can access test results, fill out any necessary paperwork, and transparently keep track of appointments and financial costs - all without taking any time from already busy medical teams.

Digital front doors can manage the health and wellness of people and alleviate the existing burdens on health systems. Digital front doors automate most patient touch points along their healthcare journey, allowing for a balanced relationship between medical teams and patients.

This is not just hospital-centered healthcare though; rather, it is one of the pillars of advanced population health. It delivers the right care, at the right place and at the right time, ideally before people are really unwell.

When it comes to successfully delivering healthcare in this way, information is everything.

However, it's not just about compiling information; we've got to have the right information readily available for clinicians and patients, so they can make smarter decisions.

For example, the State of Pennsylvania was able to streamline its response to the pandemic through a robust digital network of information made possible by implementing digital solutions.

An open ecosystem that facilitates the creation of a complete Electronic Health Record for patients means clinicians can better predict care needs and efficiently manage an entire population.

It means as soon as someone arrives at an emergency department (EDs) clinicians know all aspects of care including their demographic details, clinical history, medication list, radiology history, diagnostic investigations, procedures and encounters with the healthcare system.

These things all add up to clinicians being able to make better and quicker decisions.

Connecting health and social data enables information to be presented in meaningful ways to clinicians. It opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to meaningfully understanding the data and leveraging it to improve care.

It makes it far easier to deal with people remotely before they even have to arrive at the hospital and is the first step to people being able to use symptom checkers and other remote tools to self-navigate their initial health needs.

The implications of leveraging this data can have a positive impact across all aspects of population health. We could apply AI and machine learning algorithms to predict future health problems and assign appropriate resources to the right places. We could even find correlations to poor health and its likely cause.

To reap the full benefits of population health, governments, hospitals and local communities would have to work in tandem. However, they have been slow to adopt existing technologies such as digital front doors. The healthcare sector can no longer continue dragging its feet - having a solid technological ecosystem that brings every touchpoint of a patient's healthcare journey together is the best first step for communities to achieve population health.

At the very least It would mean that hospitals would have the ability to handle winter illnesses quicker without burning out staff. At its best, it means people don't even need to go to a hospital.

Now is the time to lay these foundations. We are facing another long winter of overrun hospitals. Burnt-out staff relying on broken medical systems. Clerical staff buried beneath piles of unorganized paperwork. Patients overflowing from waiting rooms, hoping they will at the very least be seen, let alone have their ailments treated. We cannot allow next winter to be the same when we know how to help.

By Dr. Chris Hobson, Global Chief Medical Officer at Orion Health. Dr. Hobson has been involved at Orion Health for over twenty years, through which he continues to drive advances in the integration of healthcare technology. He also works to boost awareness of the importance of health informatics.