6 Technology Tips for the Healthcare Industry

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The revolutionary technologies have transformed the way businesses are being conducted. Interestingly, the digital evolution has touched the healthcare industry too – and of course, for the better. Enhanced technology is making waves and this is the perfect time healthcare professionals should make the most of it.

To provide improved healthcare to patients, have a look at these useful tips.

1.  Get A Patient Portal And Inform Patients About Its Usage

As a healthcare professional, it’s always better to achieve a higher level of productivity within a limited timeframe. This is how you can utilize the saved number of hours in handling an additional number of patients. An effective way to do this is to invest in a patient portal.

Solely designed for the maintenance of patient records, an electronic portal helps patients access their medical reports (such as vaccine records and test results) without the need to visit a particular hospital to collect the same reports.

Incorporating this technology into your healthcare organization wouldn’t only help patients get instant access to their medical information but will also provide the following benefits:

  • Reduction in large queues of patients collecting their medical test reports
  • Reduction is the number of calls from patients who want to know the status of their medical reports over the phone
  • The hospital staff will be able to utilize their time is carrying out other important and urgent administrative tasks instead of spending time in physically providing medical reports to patients

2. Maintain Data Security On A Regular Basis

While electronic systems such as patient portals are a great way to provide medical test reports and other medical information to patients, let’s not forget that patient records are still considered sensitive data. Unfortunately, such data is also vulnerable to various phishing practices.

To avoid any form of data breach, change the password of portals and other electronic systems spread across the healthcare infrastructure frequently.

3. Recommend Health Apps To Your Patients

When patients are able to track their health activities, they’re motivated to practice consistency in terms of following the healthcare practitioner’s guidelines. One such way to help them do just that is by informing them about the health apps.

Here’s how this is going to work out well for you: let’s say you’ve suggested your patient adding 20-minute brisk walking to their lifestyle – thrice a week. To help them stick to this schedule, you can suggest them a specific exercise app that notifies the exact duration of their weekly brisk walk.

Wondering how this is going to benefit you as a healthcare professional?

The more your patients follow your recommendations, the better it will be for them to achieve optimal health. This will increase the success rate of your proposed medical treatment.

4. Purchase Medical Devices Wisely

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If you’re the one responsible for purchasing medical devices for your healthcare organization, ensure that each part of the device is manufactured by a credible company. If done the right way, work-related illnesses and injuries can be diagnosed and treated effectively.

5. Adapt Electronic Faxing

If paper documentation is still the preferred way in your organization to transfer patients’ documents from one department to the other, an efficient way to replace it is to use the e-fax technology. Transferring electronic files via e-fax is faster as compared to reviewing documents from a fax machine, scanning them, and attaching them to different patient records.

Plus, electronic faxing saves you a considerable amount of time because, unlike the traditional way of sending a fax, you don’t have to print, write manually, and dial fax numbers before transferring your documents to the receiver.

Besides electronic faxing, another way to share files is to transfer them to a single electronic platform.

The entire staff of a healthcare organization should be interlinked in a way that all of them can share files and view data from a single online repository. For instance, to check out the physician schedules of the week, anyone should be able to login to the platform from anywhere. Basecamp and Google Drive are two good examples of file sharing.

Incorporating this technology will not only provide easy access to essential files of the healthcare organization but will also save sufficient amount of time in terms of updating the same data.

6. Advise Health-Conscious Patients To Wear Fitness Wearables

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Some of us are highly dedicated to being more healthy and active. Besides joining a gym and finding a workout partner, we often tend to schedule an appointment with our doctor – just in case we need a medical check-up, again!

If you often come across such patients visiting you for routine check-ups (for example, to get their blood pressure level checked), you can educate them about fitness wearables that are designed to do the same task.

However, you should also make it clear to them that getting a fitness wearable is NOT an alternative to their medical check-ups. The key is to let them understand that a fitness wearable can help them track their physical activity, measure their heart rate, calories consumed, distance traveled while walking or running, and even their sleep patterns.