Health care is achieved by taking the services health care practitioners for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, management of illness and preservation of mental and physical health. Medical science distributes the health care process in different levels (Primary health care, secondary health care, and tertiary health care) depending on the acuteness of the problem or disease.
With the passing time, advancements are introducing in all fields on the daily basis. Similar fact applies to the medical and life sciences and healthcare discipline. Based on these advancements healthcare practitioners, associated with varied levels of health and experience have proposed healthcare predictions regarding the healthcare reforms, acknowledgments about the importance of healthcare, trends about health insurance and other management risks.
Significance of Mobile health:
Mobile health is a sub-segment of ehealth (healthcare practice supported by electronic processes and communication). It enables physicians to take care of their patients’ health through employing information and communication technology (ICT) such as computers, mobile phones, communications satellite, patient monitors, etc. Mobile health monitoring also abbreviated as mhealth allows healthcare providers at all healthcare levels to efficiently track their patients’ condition even after their duty hours of office.
By using mobile devices and other wireless and web-based applications, patients would be able to administer tests such as glucose level, blood pressure, weight monitoring and other biochemical tests themselves. These information technology devices also allow patients to transmit answers about their health conditions to their physicians easily and quickly that acquires a high importance while monitoring and diagnosis of chronic diseases such as heart failure, diabetes, nausea etc. Mobile health monitoring has become a crucial component in avoiding adverse circumstance reducing hospital readmissions and time consumption. Research and surveys have shown that patients who are enabled for self-tracking make healthier selections.
Predictions about the Healthcare plans:
A good health makes us capable of performing other life associated tasks with the required efficiency. And healthcare leads us to the way to manage or attain a good health ambition through the instructions of health care providers. People choose different health insurance plans to take care of their and family’s health. These plans protect the financial health of consumers by offering the free primitive health care services such as:
- Alcohol Misuse screening and counseling.
- Aspirin use to prevent cardiovascular disease for men and women of certain ages.
- Cholesterol, Diabetes, Blood Pressure screening for all adults.
- Colorectal Cancer screening for adults over 50.
- Immunization vaccines for all adults and children:
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Herpes Zoster
- Human Papillomavirus
- Influenza (Flu Shot)
- Measles, Mumps, Rubella
- Meningococcal
- Pneumococcal
- Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis
- Varicella
- Obesity screening and counseling for all adults
- Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adults at higher risk
- Syphilis screening for all adults at higher risk
- Tobacco Use screening for all adults and cessation interventions for tobacco users
In addition to the primitive screening diagnostic tests, healthcare plans offer several benefits:
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- Ambulatory services (health care service without being admitted to a hospital)
- Emergency services
- Hospitalization (such as surgery)
- Pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care.
- Counseling and psychotherapy services
- Prescription drugs
- Rehabilitative services
- Chronic disease management services
- Pediatric services
Numerous health care institutions are bringing reforms about increasing the public awareness regarding the importance of healthcare plans and thus it is predicted that with 2015 would be a transformative year with respect to healthcare private plans. As physicians prefer to deliver the individual services and therefore Independent Physician Associations (IPAs) are starting to put together the tools and strategies that will allow them to carry the risk and remain independent of hospital systems. This trend indicates that more diversity in health insurance plans may be expected in the ongoing year.
Exchanges and variety of health insurance will create an enormous flow of new consumers and increase the need to manage huge data of patients. Health care providers and payers will have a huge rush of new patient populations who would be new to health care access and have knowledge of healthcare benefits and suitable insurance exchange plans. These new patients, who experience the interaction with healthcare system for the first time, must be educated about the important steps to treat unpleasant health conditions and preserve good mental and physical health. Hospitals, physicians, doctors, and other healthcare associated person must critically analyze the trends of new patient populations to identify care gaps, track emerging advances in healthcare trends to meet the goal of improving citizen health and lowering national healthcare costs.
Predictions about infection control:
Antimicrobial resistance is a critical growing issue worldwide. It occurs when a microbe and its progeny get a mutation source in genetics, either spontaneously or experimentally, making it resistant to the effect of the antimicrobial agent e.g. antibiotics. Thus considering necessary guidelines and recommendations to address the issue public health departments are required to implement automated clinical surveillance key to reducing the risk of future infections. In this, they would be able to track and lower the CMS (center of Medicare and Medicaid services) penalties.
Infection control and clinical surveillance tools provide significant information comprising of patient monitoring, antibiotic de-escalation, and automated antibiograms. This will lead to an increase utilization of antibiotics to reduce bacterial resistance by encouraging patient safety protocols and minimizing unnecessary costs. It will empower the healthcare providers to identify those at risk of serious infections so that they would take require actions on time.
Reduction in hospital acquired infections:
People who have new access to healthcare system and lack important knowledge about healthcare usually leave hospital or primary care doctor’s clinic without proper understanding about their health conditions. They do not know how to properly administer their prescribed drugs and medications and significance of visiting physician on appropriate schedule. This negligence and lack of information lead to hospital readmissions, increase healthcare costs and ultimately increase frequency of center for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) penalties.
Implementation of integrated and automated solutions would enable health care institutes to encourage the care coordination system between physicians, pharmacists, laboratory personnel and patients to provide the required data needed for identification of problem, calculate the progress graph of prevention efforts and eventually reduce the hospital readmissions and probability of hospital acquired infections(HAIs).
Educate public about healthcare importance:
With the advancement in medical and life sciences there would be an increase in trend of educating people about healthcare importance. Mobile health devices and other web-based application assist individuals to manage their healthcare and provoke new consumers to take interest and care about their health seriously. Similarly as IT devices help in marketing of other fields and products. Thus, it would cause an increase engagement of patient about their health issues.
Efficient healthcare alert management:
With the emergence of mobile health monitoring system, that helps physicians and health care providers to schedule properly for their patient care. In market many devices have been introduced to manage alerts and alarms to efficiently follow the schedule. Through these alerts physicians and organizations would also be able to effective track the recovery process of their patients. But there is a need of customization of clinical decision support systems to filter only relevant alerts.
Public health institutes as healthcare data hubs:
The primary challenge that hospitals and public health providers face is that their technology networks are vast and consist of separate small departments for laboratory, pathology, pharmacy, diagnosis, research and billing. It’s a goal of medical institutes to implement a bi-directional data exchange system that should be adaptable and customizable with enterprise-wide scalability. Implementation of this coordinating system will cause extinction of these separate departments and enable hospitals to operate as healthcare data HUBs.
Prevalent Low Healthcare cost:
It is also predicted that healthcare cost would not get inflation because market is proposing new healthcare plans to attract more consumers and the research in medical field also occupies a great area that is producing new medicated drugs on daily basis. Thus, providing patients with more options and facilities. This advancement would lead to sticking prices of healthcare.
Influx in drug discovery:
Healthcare industry would see a huge influx of specialty drugs. Because of extended research and studies in medical field, significant drugs are being discovered on daily basis. On one end world is facing the issue of antimicrobial resistance while on the other end scientist and physicians are proposing new methods of diagnosis, treatments and prevention.
Probability of new health risks:
Ebola is expected to be disappearing from developed countries in the world. But this does not mean that world would become free of Ebola or other viral diseases. The probability of getting some new disease of pathogen is not yet abolished. So, medical professionals must propose important guidelines in this regard.
However, keep in view all the harsh and cheerful facts the ultimate goal of all the modern efforts and actions in healthcare discipline should be welfare of humanity. All the public health institutions and healthcare providers must be loyal to their profession and empower patients to clearly communicate about their health issues to achieve the ultimate height of progress and healthcare in the entire world.
