There is no longer a question of whether technology will revolutionize the healthcare industry. It’s already happening. The question now is what direction this automation of various healthcare services will take moving into the future.
Pharmacy Services
Accuracy, efficiency, and customer service are the keys to running a successful pharmacy. Modern technologies that focus on hospital pharmacy automation are designed to make life easier for pharmacists and techs, freeing up time that would otherwise be spent counting, packaging, and dispensing medications. This leaves workers with more time to focus on customer care, while simultaneously reducing medication errors and increasing efficiency.
Administrative Tasks
Today’s healthcare facilities are increasingly relying on AI to automate administrative tasks, such as maintaining records, scheduling appointments, following up on patient payments, and pre-authorizing insurance. That’s good news for providers, patients, and administrators, alike. Doctors and nurses get easy, HIPAA-compliant access to all the patient information they need, the administrative staff has more time for one-on-one patient communications, and patients benefit from a better level of care. Plus, healthcare facilities can save money by reducing busywork and ensuring patient satisfaction.
Wearable Tech
Some experts believe that wearable tech such as FitBits and smartwatches will play a larger role in monitoring patient health in the future. Patients can already use AI-driven wearable tech to monitor their own health, which reduces unnecessary doctor’s visits and hospital admissions and helps patients with complex health conditions avoid potential complications. These same technologies could be modified to provide essential information directly to providers.
Improved Information Security
Modern medical facilities already use computers to keep track of patient records, but they often rely on manual data entry. Given that most serious data breaches are the result of human error, automating data entry, processing, and sharing could prove valuable as a means of enhancing security. Automated systems coded with the explicit intention of securely sharing data across healthcare networks could use locked-down hardware to perform more reliably, securely, and efficiently than current systems.
Keeping Up with Changing Expectations
Although older patients still prefer to deal directly with other human beings when they make appointments or request information, today’s younger generations expect their data to be easily available on their schedules, from anywhere. Automation is the only way to meet those expectations.
Those patients who prefer to stick with traditional methods of communication can also benefit from automation. Healthcare professionals, including both providers and administrators, already have more time to spend on patient communications with less busywork to do. That trend should continue in the future.
Toward Better Technological Integration
Opponents of increased automation in the healthcare industry often misunderstand the implications of technologies like AI, robotics, and other increasingly popular technologies. The purpose is not to replace humans with machines, which would be neither possible nor desirable. It is to use technology to complement the valuable services provided by healthcare professionals, making it easier for them to do their jobs and provide excellent patient care.
The Bottom Line
The technologies in use today can give consumers and providers alike some idea of what to expect in the future, but there is no way to predict the degree to which automation might change and improve healthcare systems. Ultimately, only time will tell.
