Technology for health professionals

Patrick Hourtoulle

March 21, 2019

Connectivity is at the heart of the network that connects people and machines to redefine care delivery.

Although the internet has made many individuals believe they can self-diagnose their ailments, true healthcare professionals are building their knowledge, learning from profound and rapid technology change to accurately diagnose and help others be healthy. And, because of the increasingly comprehensive information available, there is an opportunity for health professionals to develop new therapeutic approaches.

Hospital connectivity is driving many of the advances being experienced today. A "digital twin" of the hospital enables preventive, predictive, participatory, personalized and relevant medicine. Over the next five to ten years, connectivity in health will move professionals from just caring for patients to being proactive in their care.

The keyword is: CONNECTIVITY

• Simplify, secure and optimize inter-professional exchanges

• Optimize information flows and business models to refocus professionals on their core business

• Transmit information to patients and enable them to become agents in their own care

• Implement an effective mesh between patients, professionals, equipment and resources

Moving from justification to prevention

For the tasks performed, too often, current tools available to healthcare professionals are used as a justification process. With the convergence of technology and associated practices, a radical change is coming to practices.

Medical care will be more preventive care because of telemedicine and associated tools. These tools help support decisions based on diagnosis made through the reprocessing of risk information.

Refocus caregivers on their core business

The organization of the patient journey in a consistent manner, combined with visibility and cross-communication with the stakeholders concerned, will eliminate the loss of time related to miscommunication due to inappropriate tools. Thus, each healthcare professional will focus on his or her core job, rather than wasting time on administrative tasks.

Optimize flows

Outpatient surgery will become more widespread as home-based recovery and monitoring will be more practical. Enhanced care plans will help relieve emergencies, optimize care flow and the patient’s journey.

What does the future hold?

In the years to come, the following tools and solutions will be more readily available:

• The shared medical file will not only be a data warehouse, it will offer analyzed and cross-referenced information to support decisions.

• Access to patient data and applications, supporting large volumes of data, will be mobile, in real time and ultra-secure.

• Dedicated portals integrating collaborative services, allowing the linking a group of people, the collection and the simplified exchange of information (within and outside the hospital).

• Connected devices designed and certified to produce data that makes sense. Platforms to store and exchange this data in a secure way and provide access to professionals.

• Artificial intelligence with collaborative tools to analyze and process the large volume of data.

• Telemedicine will enable a doctor to use the generated data and, if necessary, use artificial intelligence for complex diagnoses. Remote monitoring of patients will minimize movement, perioperative monitoring applications will be developed.

• Customized patient monitoring will be assisted by robots, connected systems, tools of assistance for caregiving. These tools will give professionals more time for the human relationship with the patient by providing them with relevant information about the patient's condition.

• Better organization and workflows will enable significant reductions of administrative constraints and improve vigilance and execution of automated tasks.

• Geolocation and navigation services will make it easy to find the necessary medical equipment and personnel.

• Social networks dedicated to health professionals will enable more efficient communication, better cohesion, better scientific performance (advice, help with diagnosis, feedback, and more).

Technology and human welfare: Striving for positive changes

The combination of human welfare and technology allows the development of these new services:

• Robotic and artificial intelligence

• Connected objects

• Beds, smart band-aids, vital signs sensors connected devices

• Tools for assistance in caregiving (secure delivery of medications, medication side-effects, better observance of treatments, cross analysis)

• Bracelets, badges, connected equipment for geolocation identification, traceability in real-time

• Patient and professional portals, including communication and multimedia collaboration services

• Optimization of connected equipment, IoT and infrastructure

• Big data and associated analysis

Innovative solutions built with and for health professionals

Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow™ allows the hospital to manage who is in contact with, or has access to such data, and interactions with the outside world.

Rainbow For Developers enables engagement and partnership with start-ups to provide integrated connectivity services in business applications.

ALE has co-built a social network based on Rainbow, dedicated to health professionals and offering:

• Presence status

• Newsfeed, instant messaging, voice, video

• Sharing of scientific documents

• Help in planning meeting (availability of resources)

Health professionals who are used to working in isolation, will collaborate more with more efficient tools for use around patients and on joint research projects. At the heart of this development is the full connectivity applied to organizations (mobility, geolocation, network infrastructure, optimized workflows), inter-professional/patients collaboration and the ability to integrate connectivity into business applications.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise collaboration technologies work to optimize the care quality and efficiency while improving the well-being at work of healthcare professionals.

Read the other blogs of the “Hospital of the future” series:

• The future of the patient experience 

Download the white paper to discover ALE’s complete vision of the Hospital of the Future.

Learn more about Rainbow for Healthcare and our Healthcare solutions