Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

To understand the Barriers Better, Am sharing with you various Case Studies for the Same. The first case study involved a company that was primarily in the business of selling prescription drugs online. This was a pure Internet startup, rather than an existing pharmacy that added an online channel. ePharmacy focuses exclusively on the sale of (1) prescription pharmaceuticals, (2) over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals, (3) vitamins, minerals, supplements (VMS) and herbal products and (4) related healthcare products. The Company has invested over $10 million in state-of-the-art technology and facilities including fully automated pharmaceutical dispensing equipment that enables the company to fulfil customer orders rapidly upon receipt of the order via the Internet. ePharmacy began selling OTC pharmaceuticals and other healthcare products through its website in May 1999 and began sales of prescription drugs and providing healthcare information in late October 1999. With respect to prescr...

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...