The widespread adoption and use of digital health is opening new and innovative ways to improve health and health care delivery. Digital health is shifting the patient role from a passive recipient of care to an active participant who has greater control and responsibility for managing their health .and gaining access to high-quality, personalized care. Digital health tools can tailor treatment plans based on individual patient data, to more targeted and effective care, including self-management of chronic conditions. It provides easy access to educational resources, utilities for setting health goals, and tracking progress. By having access to their health data, patients can be more involved in discussions with their doctors about treatment options. Patient portals, online platforms where patients can view their medical records, schedule appointments, and communicate with providers, and mobile applications such as medication reminders
fitness trackers, smartwatches, and other devices that monitor vital signs and activity levels, change the way healthcare is perceived, practiced and delivered. With telehealth, virtual consultations between patients and healthcare providers through video conferencing, adds another dimension, enabling patients to seek answers to questions without getting into a car or public transportation for a face -to-face visit with their clinician.
The introduction of electronic health records (EHRs), digital versions of patients’ medical charts, now offer real-time information about medical histories. EHRs can also be shared in a variety of ways among clinical decision-makers, from diverse locations, allowing them to easily track health data over time, monitor patients’ conditions and improve healthcare quality. EHRs also enable patient information to be shared among a variety of providers who may be in many diverse locations and institutions. For example, a patient can get a CT scan from their local community hospital, and, on the advice of their PCP, can then go to a major academic teaching center where their diagnostic images can be reviewed digitally.
Digital Health has also changed the work routines of the physician who now must spend hours every day wrestling with long loading times to view clinical data and analyze a litany of structured data sets to address medical billing requirements for innumerable insurance companies. Physicians also must deal with a nearly endless sea of protected health information on their individual patients. Digital health is so overwhelming, that many physicians are leaving the field. This causes a problem for everyone. It is predicted that by the end of this year, the United States is expected to have a shortage of up to 64,000 physicians.1 That is projected to grow to 86,000 by 2036.
Physicians shed light on the factors that are pushing them out of the workforce and the changes that could make them stay. McKinsey and Company, Laura Medford-Davis and Rupal Malani with Chelsea Snipes and Pieter Du Plessis)
Digital health is transforming how medical professionals provide care, what patients do to receive it, and how health care systems operate. On the positive side, it fosters changes that introduce new therapies and new best practices for better health management and enables massive amounts of data to be collected and analyzed to help improve patient well-being, enable the interchange of information, encourage communication and reduce the cost of care. On the negative side it is impacting the work flow for clinicians, making it almost impossible for them to do the work of healing the patient that should be their key mandate.