No doubt our healthcare system has evolved tremendously since olden times. Digital technology plays a vital role in modern-day healthcare operations. But, despite the advancements in healthcare technology, our primary approach still remains acute and reactive. The present-day healthcare system operates by offering instant medical help and simplifying healthcare operations. With the surge in IoT devices that have improved connectivity in the healthcare domain, we are now progressing towards a more preventive and proactive healthcare system.
The future of healthcare systems will focus on connected healthcare that involves remote patient monitoring, digital care and instant access to critical medical data. Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions for Healthcare are vital tools to create a constructed connected healthcare system.
Using the FHIR server, healthcare providers can securely share patient data and improve collaboration to improve patient outcomes,” according to a recent Scalefusion blog post about connected health
What is Connected Healthcare?
Connected Healthcare is when healthcare technology and telecommunications merge to enable remote medical assistance and deeper data analytics. Connected healthcare is a result of rapid digitalization and defines the future of the healthcare sector. With this, medical professionals, caregivers, dentists, patients and their family members can all have access to critical information. It helps the healthcare industry to move past the traditional methods and embrace newer trends like telemedince, m-health, and telemedicine.
What Are the Benefits of Connected Healthcare?
The main objective of connected healthcare is to improve patient experience and help healthcare professionals to improve their agility and remote management. Let’s look at some of the benefits of connected healthcare.
1. Better Use of Medical Data
Hospitals and healthcare facilities are generally overwhelmed with large-scale manual data recording and processes. Connected healthcare helps generate much more relevant data, without the need for professionals to manually analyze the data. With this, the medical data can be put to better use to predict illnesses and treat patients. Healthcare institutes can use this data better to create databases and repositories for doctors to fall back on. Patient history, rare medical diseases and treatments can all be at the healthcare professionals’ fingertips.
2. More Precision
Connected healthcare relies on a network of interconnected digital devices or telemedicine devices. Patient monitoring, recording and analytics all happen electronically without human intervention. This negates the manual error to a considerable extent. The medical data generated from various devices are more accurate and consistent compared to manual data entries.
3. Predictive Analysis
Connected healthcare demands a large-scale implementation of various digital devices in the healthcare system. Remote patient monitoring devices or telemedicine devices, wearable technology and information provided by the patients all sum up to a large volume of data. This real-time data can help medical professionals to track patient vitals in real-time and assess risk factors. It can help in the early diagnosis of medical conditions and enable healthcare professionals to initiate preventive health measures.
4. Reduced Site Visits
With the implementation of mobile technology, remote patient monitoring and online consultations are a reality. Doctors no more need to be physically present on-site to provide medical consultations. Hospitals can seek medical consultations from professionals worldwide. Patients too can connect with their physicians from anywhere.
5. Improved Patient Experience
One of the greatest advantages of connected healthcare is improved patient management. Patients can seek medical help from their homes, offices or anywhere without standing in long queues. Patients and their family members can also obtain electronic medical reports and book online consultations.
Roadblocks to Connected Healthcare
Although connected healthcare seems to be the perfect upgrade to the present-day healthcare management system, implementing it comes at the cost of some challenges. The healthcare industry should be aware of the following roadblocks before they plan to switch gears from traditional to connected healthcare.
1. Cybersecurity and Data Privacy
The connected healthcare system relies heavily on healthcare iot solutions devices. The use of the internet and IoT devices is not completely safe. Accessing and exchanging data from IoT devices can give rise to serious patient data privacy concerns. With the rising number of hackers and cyber threats in the world, the healthcare industry has to consider the security risks in implementing connected devices. There are several data privacy regulations around the world such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc. which may have serious legal consequences on your organization for violations.
Read more: The Role of Mobile Device Management in Compliance2. Secure Exchange of Patient Information
Connected healthcare helps the healthcare industry generate and analyze heaps of medical data. This data can be relayed back and forth between medical teams, healthcare professionals and patients to simplify operations. However, considering the sensitivity of the patient data, the healthcare industry must ensure a secure exchange of this data. Unless patients are assured of the confidentiality of their data, they may not want to exchange their reports and records remotely.
3. Managing Multitudes of Telemedicine Devices
To adopt a digital healthcare environment, hospitals and healthcare facilities are required to implement multitudes of diverse devices. From telemedicine devices to self-help kiosks and also digital devices provided to on-site staff. Managing hundreds and thousands of devices is a tedious task. It is important for the healthcare industry to ensure that digital devices are used to improve productivity, and not for entertainment purposes. Securing and managing multitudes of devices can consume hours of administrative effort.
Role of Scalefusion MDM in Shaping the Connected Healthcare System
To make the most of the connected healthcare system, it is important for healthcare organizations to implement strategies to tackle the challenges. All the above-mentioned challenges can be resolved by implementing MDM solutions for healthcare.
Scalefusion is an MDM that offers extensive device and endpoint management features for the healthcare industry to optimize their remote operations and deliver a secure connected healthcare experience.
Let’s understand how Scalefusion MDM helps the healthcare industry embrace the connected healthcare system:
1. Cross-Platform Compatibility
Scalefusion MDM offers healthcare organizations a unified platform to secure, manage and monitor their diverse devices. Be it commercial devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops provided to the healthcare professional, or custom-built medical devices such as digital kiosks, patient monitors, etc. you can manage them all with a single software. Scalefusion supports Android, iOS, macOS and Windows 10 management. So your organization can deploy versatile devices for various business needs, and invest in just one solution to secure and manage them.
2. Data Security
Since connected healthcare amplifies the amount of medical data generated and because patient-data privacy is of utmost importance, Scalefusion offers extensive data security features. You can configure data encryption policies, protect your digital devices with strong passcodes, push VPN configurations on your digital devices and much more straight from the dashboard. In case of loss or theft of your digital devices containing sensitive patient information, Scalefusion lets you remotely wipe off the data.
3. Deploying Custom Devices
Purchasing custom medical equipment such as dedicated patient monitoring devices can incur huge costs for hospitals. Scalefusion lets you turn your commercial tablets into custom kiosks. Healthcare organizations can lock their tablets into a single app using Scalefusion’s single app Kiosk mode. With this, commercial tablets can be locked into a single patient management app, heart rate monitoring app and much more to obtain special dedicated devices.
4. Secure Information Sharing
Medical staff can share critical patient information and medical records securely with Scalefusion. You can push patient case files, health reports, diagnostics data and much more in various formats. This helps healthcare professionals adopt the paperless approach and quit handling bulky files.
5. Monitored Usage of Digital Devices
Connected healthcare depends on connectivity delivered by digital devices. This emphasizes the need to keep all the deployed devices secure and well-functioning. Scalefusion helps IT administrators of hospitals and healthcare facilities to monitor various device vitals and ensure that all the deployed devices are in the best health. You can track the activity logs and usage patterns and even configure compliance alerts for your staff.
Closing Lines
The future of healthcare inclines towards improved patient care and simplified healthcare operations. Adopting newer technologies to improve collaboration, automate time-consuming processes and make critical information accessible is the key. Scalefusion MDM helps the healthcare industry adopt digital technology confidently and manage them effortlessly.
Schedule a live demo with our product experts to explore more about Scalefusion’s Healthcare MDM capabilities. Please visit https://scalefusion.com/book-a-demo
