Throughout the semester, one of the major
challenges of today’s healthcare industry that we have discussed so far is the
soaring cost for delivering the healthcare services. The original motivation to
investigate the role of mobile applications in the future development of
healthcare was attributed to the characteristics of telemedicine technology,
such as, the flexibility, instantaneous ability, and possible economic benefits
of being adapted with mHealth (mobile
health). Our project started with the analysis of three telemedicine
applications and the comparison of their usability, which pretty much being
covered in Kathryn’s part. As we are interested in the future
development and considerations of telemedicine, my part will be more
concentrate on the future trends of it as well as the potential challenges. The
fundamental approach that I used to gather my preliminary data was the related
research paper from Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In my final blog
post, you can expect to see the summary of economic benefits that mHealth would give rise to both
developing and developed countries, and my thoughts on the implications of the
project.
Healthcare Background
In this short section, I will give a
fundamental background of healthcare in both developing country and developed
country and how might telemedicine will affect the current scenario. In developed countries, though the healthcare
topic is very controversial in the U.S. and the debates around it has been
shifted from the ObamaCare to TrumpCare, most of the developed countries
provide insurance for their citizens and cost for healthcare services is affordable
and reasonable such as in German and Japan. Both public and private healthcare
providers are very optimistic to telemedicine and the transition towards the
technology into application is very fast.
The scenario in developing countries does not
present as good as those developed countries. For example, in China, the
government has not developed a mature system and regulations on healthcare insurance,
and due to the variants of population density, where population density is much
higher in big cities, patients in China are less likely to get immediate
healthcare services. Furthermore, the rate of literacy is much lower than in
those developed countries so that the introductory education on healthcare is
also needed.
During my research, I was not surprised by
the unbalancing allocation of the healthcare resource in those developing
countries, and the reason behind the scenarios may either be the huge
population such as China and India or the low rate of literacy. However, what
really impressed me is fast growing of internet users, which also can be a
reflection of smartphone users.
The
statistics data from World Bank showed that the internet users in China has
reached a 50.3% of the total population, but what is more impressive is the
rate of increase in internet users that both China and India showed are optimistic
when I consider the future trends of telemedicine in those developing
countries. Therefore, it is reasonable for us to have a very positive prospect
when talking about the future of telemedicine in those countries.
The Economic Benefits
We already saw one possible solution to the inadequate
healthcare in developing countries is to use communication technologies for
healthcare. The development of voice recognition, virtual/augmented reality,
and artificial intelligence is providing better performance and usability of
telemedicine applications. Some of the examples can be drawn upon other
classmates’ presentation, such as healthcare surveillance can be synchronized via
wearable devices and more efficient treatment from analytical outcomes. All of
those technologies would add more credits on the performance, flexibility, and reliability
on the use of telemedicine.
Furthermore, one particular benefit that I
can see through those developments is from the economic aspect. From the
research paper that particularly focusing on the economic benefits of mobile
application wrote by Doctor Powell, he pointed out that both direct and
indirect benefits in economics are generating from the use of app. For the
purpose of referencing, I have attached a source table below.
In particular with the functionality that
mobile application can performed such as, healthcare information collecting,
instance video/audio interaction with healthcare providers, and appropriate
guidance on basic symptoms give patients a shortcut to “doctors”, which definitely
save time costs and the actual economic costs.
Future Considerations
As I have addressed some possible challenges
from both information security and government regulations during the final
presentation. I was not so clear about how more people will take the advantage
of using mobile applications versus the concern about privacy and security.
According to the study constructed by ITOnline in 2015, about two thirds of
Americans would use a mobile app to manage health-related issues. Top downloads
sorted by categories are:
- Tracking diet/nutrition (47 percent)
- Medication reminders (46 percent)
- Tracking symptoms (45 percent)
- Tracking physical activity (44 percent)
Improved integrated biometric authentication
methods, such as finger prints, facial recognition or even the most recent
retina technology would provide more secure accessing to your smartphone and
healthcare data stored in mobile platforms.
In accordance with my current project stage,
and the data that I have collected, I think telemedicine broadens the
opportunity for patients to have access in healthcare services or communicate
with doctors which maybe hardly to happen in developing country. Besides some
advantages from functionalities’ aspect (For details please refer on Kathryn’s
post), telemedicine also adds credits on the economics benefits either direct
or indirect. In the future, I believe the debate around privacy and security
would remain controversial and will still be an issue for most of the time, but
with more secure methods or encryption that we have discussed so far, I do keep
a very positive prospect for the future of telemedicine.
