Inquiry Regarding Emerging Trends and Research Areas in Digital Healthcare

Dear Senior Experts and Research Engineers in Digital Healthcare,

I'm Thathsara Nanayakkara CEng MIET,I'm from Sri Lanka and I am currently engaged in research within the realm of smart healthcare-related electronics and automation.

I am reaching out to your esteemed community to gather insights into the latest trends, novel research ideas, and prevailing challenges within digital healthcare. I aim to identify potential areas of improvement and innovation through the integration of smart technologies.

Specifically, I am interested in understanding:

1. Emerging trends in digital healthcare that are shaping the future of the industry.
2. Novel research ideas that hold promise for advancing healthcare through technological innovation.
3. Prevalent challenges hindering the widespread adoption and effectiveness of smart healthcare solutions.
4. Areas of improvement where innovative approaches can significantly enhance patient care and healthcare outcomes.

Your expertise and insights would be invaluable in guiding my research efforts. Any comments, suggestions, or recommendations you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

  • Hi Thathsara - I've work in Digital healthcare for 20 years. I'll try and respond to your points in turn.

    1. Emerging trends in digital healthcare that are shaping the future of the industry. Most tech innovations boil down to efficiency and safety. There is a link between the two, as a more efficient system is inherently safer as patient soften get more timely access and more clinical time. Access challenges differ depending on the sector. For primary care the onus is on giving valid alternatives to keep a GPs time available to those with the most need for a doctor. For community its about logistics of matching skilled resources to patient needs and locations. For mental health and acutes its about triage, referring to the correct location, access to a bed, and understanding the tasks required for a safe discharge. There are obviously many complex circumstances outside of these simplified statements. At the heart of all care is patient flow and this is demanding alot of attention. Command Centres / Control Rooms are now more prevalent at a higher geographical scale than one provider. Much of their impact relies on high quality data, in close to real-time, recorded in the right system and made available safely to others across the system. One key aspect of innovation is how this is interpreted and presented to allow quick and consistent decisions to be made. And with AI - the potential to develop predication algorithms and apply them in real time to avoid bottlenecks before they occur.
    2. Novel research ideas that hold promise for advancing healthcare through technological innovation. The application of AI to the huge amounts of data, to develop robust algorithms that can take some of the decision making burden from staff and reduce variation. This is obviously a very topical area - so needs some thought - as the data quality is still a threat to the development of the algorithms, as as digitisation continues to be deployed, the longevity of the data is not necessarily yet available upon which to operate. Data quality is facing the challenge of overworked staff whom simply want to care. Voice tech is now an emerging possibility but tends to focus on theatres and outpatient clinics. It needs more penetration in inpatient wards where a lot of the data  collection is challenging. Passive systems are trying to make an appearance but it is a slow burn.
    3. Prevalent challenges hindering the widespread adoption and effectiveness of smart healthcare solutions. Data quality / staff resistance to more change / record systems not designed to integrate / many many competing voices trying to influence the design / money for training and ongoing staff support / re-procurement of records systems before they've even optimised due to public procurement rules
    4. Areas of improvement where innovative approaches can significantly enhance patient care and healthcare outcomes. Real-time advice and guidance to nudge the behaviour of users at all times, thus creating instant feedback. We really need to ensure all users feel they have "skin in the game". More hands free tech to relieve staff of the burden of typing. Improving the timely dispensing of medications at time of discharge. Greater use of home based real time monitoring solutions that allow a virtual bed base to be used appropriately by hospitals (hospitals raise the risk of infection). 

    Much of the above is basic things done better. The complexity in the range of systems is large and varied.