Telehealth, remote monitoring and digital healthcare administration to take off

Our patients have the ease of maintaining all their medical records in a centralised system and they do not need to carry them around while within our ecosystem, says Shyatto Raha - Founder and CEO, MyHealthcare.

What is customer experience to you in the age of AI? How are you using data properly in the age of AI?

Healthcare professionals’ experiences can be enhanced with the use of AI by allowing them to spend more time providing direct patient care and lowering burnout.

• Faster and more efficient care: A lot of repetitive operations, such data entry and analysis, are automated by MyHealthcare with the use of AI. This can save time and money while enabling healthcare professionals to concentrate on more crucial activities and offer care more effectively.

• Personalized medicine: By analysing a patient’s medical history and other data, AI enables us to develop individualized treatment strategies. This would enable medical professionals to customize treatment plans to meet the unique requirements of each patient, improving outcomes and enhancing the patient experience.

• Predictive analytics: AI also aids in the analysis of vast amounts of data to spot patterns and forecast future health outcomes. This can assist our healthcare professionals in identifying potential issues early and taking preventative measures, so improving general health and lowering expenditures.

• Improved diagnosis and treatment: In our ecosystem, AI is also used to analyse data such as medical photos and other types of data in order to find trends and improve diagnosis. This could aid medical professionals in making better decisions on patient care.

• Speech to Text (NLP): By including a Speech to Text capability in our IPD and OPD EMR software, we are easing the strain on doctors by giving them the option to speak all the patient information, including the main complaints, the history of the current disease, a review of the systems, current prescriptions, and allergies. The time saved on data entry is put towards giving the patient high-quality care.

• Electronic Medical Records (EMR): Electronic health records are extensively analysed using AI to spot trends and forecast future health consequences. In order to improve patient care and general health, clinicians can use this to acquire a longitudinal perspective of patient records, spot potential issues early, and take preventative measures.

Overall, using AI in our applications has several advantages and improves patient care and outcomes. Healthcare practitioners are able to increase the effectiveness and quality of care, which results in better patient outcomes, by utilizing AI in our solutions.

What are the trends that will drive customer experience?

India is creating an accelerated innovation model of entrepreneurship. Indian companies are changing the market by seizing opportunities, questioning the status quo, and innovating across sectors. Startups will remain at the vanguard of innovation with AI, IoT, and data analytics, especially as data replaces money in the healthcare industry. As more healthcare technology providers, especially health IT businesses accept government-led initiatives like the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), healthcare will become more tech enabled.

Some key trends that will drive customer experience are the following :

• Telehealth: Telehealth seemed ineffective and unworkable a few years ago. However, the pandemic altered attitudes and sped up the development of the telehealth infrastructure. Patients are much more accustomed to it today. In fact, people have started to favour online doctor consultations because they save time and money by removing the need for travel, waiting rooms, billing lines, etc. In 2023 and beyond, this trend will only continue to increase. The India Telemedicine market was valued at $1.10 Bn in 2022 and is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 21.2% from 2022 to 2030 and will reach $5.15 Bn. According to industry analysts, chronically ill individuals will likely use telehealth the most. In India specifically, telehealth has huge role to play because technology allows individuals in smaller cities, towns, and villages get consultations with specialized doctors in a way that has never been more accessible and affordable.

• Digital healthcare administration: With the aid of cutting-edge plug-and-play digital care systems, we will see an increase in the number of clinics, hospitals, and laboratories digitizing their daily business operations and patient care. Healthcare organizations are realizing that platforms driven by AI, ML, Big Data, etc. may improve their operational efficiencies by automating administrative activities, maintaining accurate patient data, expediting the insurance process, accelerating invoicing, and more. In the upcoming year, healthcare will also count on these technologies to improve patient care by gaining knowledge from patient data, connecting the dots that matter, facilitating quicker decision-making, providing individualized care, and assuring favourable patient outcomes.

• Patient involvement and experience will be prioritized: There has never been a greater level of consumer acceptance or even willingness for digital connection in healthcare. As patients grow acclimated to utilizing them, an increase in the popularity of patient interaction portals is another development that will emerge in 2023. More people will rely on these patient portals or platforms’ patient-centric, individualized care to meet all of their healthcare needs, including making appointments with doctors, speaking with medical professionals over video call, monitoring their own health metrics, signing up for tests, ordering medications, using homecare services, and more. This will allow them to get whatever they need more quickly, easily, and conveniently in one place.

• Remote monitoring: Remote monitoring will become more popular in the near future as it eases the workload for medical professionals, makes monitoring simple, and lowers expenses. This is also related to the objective of increasing access to healthcare, particularly in a nation like India. The India patient monitoring market size was valued at US&1,369.68 million in 2020 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.40% during the forecast period, 2021–2028. Additionally, wearables will be essential for remote monitoring, assisting doctors in keeping tabs on their patients’ health and assuring prompt medical assistance. This will be especially important for keeping track of the health of elderly patients, kids, those suffering from chronic illnesses, and people with mental health concerns.

Highlight some initiatives taken up at your company to deliver superior customer experience?

MyHealthcare is a digital healthcare ecosystem providing enhanced patient care outcomes by improving healthcare delivery services. The ecosystem offers an exclusive MyHealth Plus Subscription (MH+) to all its patients and customers. These subscription plans are at an annual validity to start with and are available to users to purchase on the MHC Patient App. The MH+ plans include bundled services such as doctor consults, lab tests, homecare services and more. These annual subscription plans are budget friendly and are customised to cater to the needs of individuals, families with children and also senior citizens.

We have tied up with top hospitals across India such as Fortis, Paras Hospital, Sakra World Hospital, PSRI Hospital etc. to provide access to specialist doctor consults to our users. We also provide home care services to the patients and have partnered with Max @Home by Max Hospitals, HCAH, Portea, and Housepital. Coming down to e- pharmacy MyHealthcare has collaborated with Tata 1mg and PharmEasy. To make diagnostics more easy and feasible the ecosystem has joined hands with Metropolis, Redcliffe Labs, Healthians.

The India patient monitoring market size was valued at US&1,369.68 million in 2020 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.40% during the forecast period, 2021–2028.

MyHealthcare provides its customers virtual consultations, homecare, medicine delivery and diagnostics at home all under one roof. At MyHealthcare, patients have the ease of maintaining all their medical records in a centralised system and they do not need to carry them around while within the MyHealthcare Ecosystem. Increased patient engagement and better commercial value is at the core of our efforts.

What were the challenges that MyHealthcare faced to meet flexibility and scalability requirements?

The biggest challenge faced in digitizing hospitals is making the shift from their legacy systems to digital. They have been using these systems for years and even though they recognize that adopting technology enabled systems will shorten their clinical processes and improve patient care to a great extent, but they are so comfortable using the existing systems that making the shift is difficult. This can be addressed through extensive training and bringing forth the advantages of digitization and digitalisation. Also, highlighting the advantages and how this transformation will optimise care delivery will go a long way in bringing about a change.

Another major challenge is one of change management in hospitals. Bringing in EMR solutions to clinical operations of a running hospital would mean a significant change management initiative – this is probably one of the toughest for any provider and requires an investment, not financially but more in terms of bandwidth to change. Here too, I would say that providers are now embracing digitisation for care delivery in a big way. We at MyHealthcare, believe that technology enabled healthcare delivery is the only path in bridging this gap.

Shyatto Raha

Founder and CEO, MyHealthcare

aanchalg@cybermedia.co.in