Transformation of Healthcare through IT in 2020

Dr. Sushil Kumar Meher, Department of Computer Facility, AIIMS

The healthcare environment has changed dramatically since last few decades. It has become information- intensive environment and has shifted its focus on technological applications. The purpose of Health IT is to provide better care for patients and help achieve health equity. Health IT supports recording of patient data to improve healthcare delivery and allow for analysis of this information for both healthcare practitioners and ministry of health/government agencies.

The present Indian Government is also focused on the same thing and the present National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) formulated by Committee formed by Government of India has laid down pathway to implement digitalization of health records. The key features of the blueprint include a Federated Architecture, a set of architectural principles, a 5-layered system of architectural building blocks, Unique Health Id (UHID), privacy and consent management, national portability, EHR, applicable standards and regulations, health analytics and above all, multiple access channels like call centre, Digital Health India portal and My Health App.

5G is expected to be transformed healthcare services and research in 5 different ways

Not only does 5G have the capacity to impact the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), it will help enable medical innovations using augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), remote medical learning, remote patient monitoring, and more.

Telemedicine: TM is planning a major role providing remote heath care services in India. Now major Telehealth services are available through internet or VSET. After introducing 5G the effective telemedicine got a network that can support near real-time, high-quality video without slowing down the facility’s network.   

Remote patient monitoring: The use of IOMT is another important aspect of medical Informatics. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the collection of medical devices and applications that connect to healthcare IT systems through online computer networks. 5G will also play a very important role to enable better and faster connections on mobile devices, which will increase data transfer capacity utilizing wider and high bandwidth, support larger blocks of health data/image transference and help healthcare workers to give live and near real-time remote care anywhere and any place of the world.

Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR): 5G will eventually open an opportunity to use augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to care for patients and to train clinicians. 5G-powered AR/VR has the potential to help enable doctors, nurses, interns, and staff to more aptly visualize procedures in an engaging, learning-by-doing practice that will enhance their education.

Big Data Analysts: 5G will help to use big data analytics tools where exchange of highly secure data needed for improved analysis in healthcare domain. Data in healthcare has the potential to be harnessed to lower operational costs and to improve efficiencies and accuracy of treatment. Additionally, AI can help predict which patients are more likely to have post-operative complications, allowing healthcare systems to provide early interventions when necessary. Additionally, AI data are now being used to perform key functions like determining diagnoses and deciding accurate treatment plans for patients.

Decentralizing the healthcare services: 5G is expected to be decentralized the health care services in India. Different health care specialist can provide their services in different geographical location any time.

Another important aspect is use of Big Data in healthcare. Analysis of Big Data such as at the genomic level can help us to have better understanding of disease as well as formulate treatment plan which can be personalized to a geographical area or to ethnic groups or can even lead to personalized treatment at individual level.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi the premier medical institute of India has also taken lead in implementation of IT in medical field. HIS is successfully running and SNOMED CT, the international standard for clinical terminology has been successfully incorporated in the HIS. A pilot project of use Of AI in detection of Cancer has been taken up with the funding of ICMR.

In addition, New Delhi is involved in developing a in house open software for HIS. Once this is developed it will be freely available for implementing across the various hospitals/intuitions in the country. The institution has already developed various software for the welfare of the patient and has been a pioneer in the field of tele-medicine.