Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

Current Utilization General use of the Internet for health points to a great demand for health-related information. For example, almost half the Internet users in 1997 reported looking for health information or support (FIND/SVP, 1997). A survey of 2,000 Internet users estimated that more than 24.8 million people sought online health and medical content in 1998, an increase of 44% from 1997 ("Double Mastectomy," 1999). E-health web sites have enjoyed growth that has outpaced general Internet use. For example, in 1999, general use of e-health sites grew 176% to almost 11 million (Media Metrix, 2000). According to Newsweek, the Web is currently a source of health or medical information for more than 50 million Americans. Patients and their families do more actual web surfing than investors, students or people who purchase online (Watson, 2001). Data from Forrester Research (Yonish, Ranguelova, Shrier, & Broadben, 2001) indicates that women are twice as likely as men to vi...

The eHealth strategy aims to address a number of issues currently being faced by people who provide care to patients and those who support them. The key issues can be summarised as follows: • Improved ability to access information that is integrated and accurate • Better support for clinicians and care providers from across the health system to interact more efficiently and effectively with each • Support for clinical and managerial decision making • Greater capability for managing patient flow through improved planning and scheduling • Support for location-independent health service delivery. Principles of Implementation: The principles for the implementation of the eHealth Strategy are: • Build on what exists today and re-use viable capabilities in place • Establish solid functionality and information, and then build new capabilities • Introduce new and extended capabilities in phases, and realise benefits incrementally • Identify solutions that improve quality of care and patient ou...

Resource generation The growth of e-health services has given rise to the need for a new breed of healthcare professionals, healthcare administrators and healthcare technologists. This industry needs people who can understand any two of healthcare, business and technology. Historically the healthcare industry has been the last adopter of technology, the same has been the case with healthcare education. Even till today, many of the medical, dental, nursing, pharmacology and other healthcare degrees do not have courses on information technology; ecommerce is only a far cry from reality. Courses in hospital and health administration have increased in the last 5 years or so. When the e-health services industry started about 3 year ago, companies relied heavily on people already employed by hospitals and on people employed by other similar companies. The industry has grown to such a size that people from non-healthcare backgrounds are being recruited and trained. Interestingly, a lot of yo...

Patient A patient can be defined as a person who receives medical examination, treatment, guidance or care from a health care professional. The contact between the patient and the health care services initiates the process of care. The patient is therefore the most important party in the health care system. A patient needs knowledge about basic health issues, access to information specifically relevant to his/her condition, awareness of health system and the options available. Practitioner The practitioner is any healthcare professional and is distinguished from a provider. The patient gets in touch with the physician (general practitioner or specialist) for consultation, which may include medical investigations, treatment or supervision of the plan of care. In e-health, it is practitioners who are engaged with clients or other practitioners in the delivery of health care. A practitioner needs access to best, up-to-date medical knowledge available pertaining to their patients. Provide...

The scale of e-health services in India has been very small so far, mostly limited to health awareness through portals, telemedicine and customer service using the internet. Even with such a small scale of operations, some significant changes are being made nationwide that will strengthen telemedicine initiatives and the healthcare industry as a whole. The most important initiative being, the standardization of exchange of health information between different entities within the healthcare sector. The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology are jointly creating a national health information infrastructure, for easy capture and dissemination of health information. To support this infrastructure, necessary steps are also being taken in creating a legally safe environment that will protect the privacy and confidentiality of health information. Steps are also being taken to educate various stakeholders of the healthcare industry...

Your degree is in medicine, not computer science. Why then are so many physicians finding themselves focused on software these days? Government, payers and market forces are all pushing physicians to consider an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) strategy. As if practicing medicine weren't challenge enough, now you need to adopt a new layer of technology infrastructure… At the same time, the value in going digital with your patient records is increasingly clear and the technology has come of age. Just like a practice management system optimized your patient schedule and improved your receivables, today's EMRs promise to automate your clinical workflows. An EMR can reduce time spent charting, provide more efficient patient visits and help meet regulatory requirements. The good news is that selecting an EMR doesn't require in-depth technical knowledge. Instead, you simply need to roll up your sleeves and run a disciplined selection process - knowing what criteria to consider is...

Recent polls show that more than two-thirds of online health consumers would prefer to obtain healthcare information from those they know and trust, namely their physicians and hospitals Services what we need and Deal with in E-health: Internet strategy and return on investment analysis Inter/Intranet site and application design, development, and hosting Health content integration Physician find and referral databases Customer relationship management systems & Human resources management systems HIPAA privacy & security system analysis and development Dynamic systems: news & events, content authoring, personalization Database integration Secure patient document imaging systems What are Meaningful Returns? Healthcare marketing To date, analysis of healthcareÕs primary focus on Internet consumer marketing leaves little to be impressed with. As healthcare organizations review their expenditures in web technology against their expectations of attracting and converting web users ...

The PDA is a very small and portable, handheld computer, which has many more functions than a calculator, and the capacity to store information much like a Personal Computer (PC). Basic functionality available on most PDAs includes an address book, schedule, calendar, note pad, and e-mail. The PDA is convenient to use in clinical and field situations for quick data management, and the information can be synchronized with a PC . By means of a wireless network, information can be exchanged anytime from anywhere to and from a PDA, and the network will provide immediate access to all kinds of necessary clinical and administrative data . Health care professionals need access to information several times a day, and the PDA has the potential to provide this. For the PDA, there are numerous documents and medical software applications available, with a wide variation in quality. A large number of medical students take advantage of the PDA for educational purposes and patient care with great sa...

Well, offlate I received a Huge amount of Inputs from the readers on my blog, Thanks to Didar, Ajay, Pankaj, David, Nitin and all of you. I am hereby drawing certain conclusions out of those Case studies which I received and studied. Steps required for Such Conclusions: (1) Create a framework for country studies. (2) Identify focal points – regional and national (WHO and Member State). (3) Set up an interdisciplinary and interministry expert group. (4) Select/appoint a national consultant. (5) Carry out research on the basis of the framework. (6) Monitor, review and finalize the study. (7) Identify gaps. (8) Build capacity. (9) Devise strategies. (10) Establish task group to carry forward initiative. High-quality infrastructure is one of the most important prerequisites for fostering the growth of the e-health industry. (The main determinants of the e-business environment for health are technology, connectivity, bandwidth availability, telephone charges, power supply and real estate.) ...