Today’s medical industry is leaps and bounds ahead of what it was a decade ago—even three years ago, before the COVID pandemic—and it’s all thanks to one word: technology.
There’s still plenty of room for the healthcare industry to continue to grow when it comes to technology. However, recent medical advancements have put the medical industry in the perfect position for further improvement and innovation. And if you operate in this quickly evolving field, now couldn’t be a better time for you to capitalize on today’s latest technological innovations, discoveries, and breakthroughs.
Here’s a rundown of how technology is used in the medical field to achieve significant change and how your organization can benefit from it.
Remote Body Monitoring
One of the top ways technology is used in the medical field today is remote patient body monitoring.
Some patients need help to visit a hospital or general practice medical center regularly due to time constraints or the inability to drive or do a lot of walking. Fortunately, remote healthcare monitoring devices can save money, time, and energy by allowing your staff to more efficiently keep track of your patients’ health statuses outside of a doctor’s visit.
For instance, some remote monitoring systems feature wearable sensors and transmitters that send data to physicians’ smart devices. The doctors’ mobile phone apps will analyze the data and provide the appropriate information or alerts. Your patients can then speak with you about any health problems revealed through the data, such as low glucose or elevated blood pressure.
Three-Dimensional Printing
Another way technology is used in the medical field is for three-dimensional printing.
With three-dimensional printing, organs, limbs, and even artificial bones can easily be printed and placed into patients’ bodies as needed. These printers have revolutionized prosthetics by making the creation of body parts very cheap and realistic. For this reason, you can expect your medical facility to incorporate three-dimensional printing into their services in the near future, or you may see more patients with printed body parts enter your practice down the road.
Mobile Devices
Tablets are also increasingly used in the medical field to perform a wide variety of patient functions. For instance, iPad and Galaxy tablets placed on tablet wall mounts, counter stands, or rolling floor stands are used in physician offices and hospitals to access copies of past patient ultrasounds, picture archiving and communication system images, and X-rays. These tablets are then used to efficiently compare patients’ current images with their previous ones.
Tablets are also being used to streamline the medical billing and ordering processes to make them more timely and accurate organization-wide. After all, healthcare team members can access tablets anywhere at the facility to ensure that insurance claims are filed and processed efficiently. Likewise, surgeons or physicians can directly enter medical orders, such as prescriptions, into their tablets and therefore reduce the errors typically associated with handwritten medical orders.
With tablets, your healthcare team can more easily educate your patients about their ailments, injuries, or conditions. That’s because tablets offer visuals, diagrams, animations, and videos that your patients can understand and view from a hospital bed or even a doctor’s office examination table.
Robotic Surgery
Finally, artificial intelligence–assisted robotic surgery remains one of today’s most revolutionary technological developments in the healthcare field. Robots are helping more surgeons to perform operations with greater precision and minimize risks. That’s because they can reduce the chances of visible scarring, pain, and blood loss during open-heart surgery or even non-invasive medical procedures.
Robots come in many sizes and shapes, from giant arms that assist doctors during complicated procedures to tiny robots that can crawl the heart’s surface.
Capitalize on the Many Benefits of Using Technology in the Medical Field Today
Technological advances are sparking changes that will continue enhancing the healthcare industry for providers and patients. The technologies increasingly used in medicine range from remote patient monitoring tools to tablets and even robots for surgery.
Consider the many above-listed uses of technology in the medical field as you seek to provide all patients with access to affordable and high-quality care in the years ahead.
