The healthcare market is divided into 6 segments as mentioned below:

• Hospitals – includes private, government, small and mid-tier hospitals run by individuals or group of doctors, consulting doctors having their own clinics for OPDs and family physicians
• Pharmaceuticals – includes manufacturing, extraction, processing, purification, and packaging of chemical materials for use as medications for humans or animals
• Diagnostics – comprises businesses and laboratories that offer analytical or diagnostic services, including body fluid analysis
• Biomedical Instrumentation – It includes establishments primarily manufacturing medical equipment and supplies, e.g. surgical, dental, orthopedic, ophthalmologic, laboratory instruments, etc.
• Medical Insurance – It includes health insurance and medical reimbursement facility, covering an individual’s hospitalization expenses incurred due to sickness
• Telemedicine – helps meet the challenges of healthcare delivery to rural and remote areas besides several other applications in education, training, and management in the health sector

These 6 segments of healthcare always operate in synchronization with Hospital, Consultant OPD, and family physicians being the primary drivers. Process automation with adaption of basic and advanced HMS (hospital management systems) has been existent for some years and is fast gearing up to smart hospital transition which seamlessly integrates all hospital stack holders including back office, consultants, nurses and delivery staff, patients along with the biomedical and other operational systems which are installed at the hospital.

While healthcare has historically been slow to adopt technology, the industry is about to witness significant changes over the next several years. The digital health market is expected to reach $206 billion by 2020. Leading companies are already redefining themselves with digital transformation, applied to their main functional areas with the customer-centric approach.

Lets’s look at the trends and challenges for the hospital sector

TRENDS

• Demanding Patient Care (can be addressed using a tool like a nurse chat boats etc.)
• Enhancing Patient Experience using process automation and data management
• Virtual Consultations for enhancing Consultant reach to the remotest of places
• Medical IOTs for the integration of medical and building facilities to the ICT backbone
• Wearable Monitoring Device for monitoring critical parameters of patients
• Technology Enhancements (use of AI, VR, AR, and BlockChain) for enhancing efficiency and precisions in critical surgeries and diagnostic tools.

CHALLENGES

• OPEX Management
• Technology Upgrades
• Consultant and Staff Retention
• Data Management
• Physical Security
• Clinical Research
• Cybersecurity

To get an edge in the competitive domain and ensure that one has an edge over their competitor’s deployment of ICT for keeping up with the trends and addressing the challenges as mentioned above is of utmost importance as this needs to be designed and executed with the right balance of technology and budgeting ensuring proper ROI.

We at Telecom and Management consultants engage with the customer in a proactive manner to ensure those right solutions are designed using the technologies that will facilitate the hospital use ICT solutions in line with their business needs.

The basic recommended solutions for building smart, futuristic and hospitals with the paperless environment along with eco-friendly energy generation are mentioned below:

• Use of Solar and window power
• Optimum daylight usage with civil designs that comply with green building norms
• Use intelligent POE enabled lighting with control over IP
• Foundation of Converged Communication Backbone capable of handling multiple sessions of 4K and 8K video traffic
• Connect edge devices using horizontal cabling with 40G/100G ready from day one
• Build a robust Wi-Fi and Li-Fi network ensuring seamless connectivity for BYOD, Scanners and BLE’s
• Use IOTs to integrate, building utilities, HVAC and other utilities ensuring ease of management and configuration over IP
• Integrate Biomedical devices to the mainstream network ensuring seamless flow of data from HIPPA and GDPR compliant software’s like HIS, PAC, etc. to the consultant desk, back office, clinical labs and pharma stores creating a truly paperless environment
• Use integrated access and surveillance solutions for better physical security which will also integrate along with Fire and PAVA solutions creating better compliance with the civic norms
• Create Telemedicine facilities which can handshake with telemedicine van and the outer world directly with the use of authenticated remote connectivity
• Integrate local EHR with the centralized government EHR
• Based on the ROI for 5 years invest in Cloud-based IaaS (infrastructure as a Service) or design a Data Center locally and DR on the cloud support with robust security engines for data protection
• Use AV tool for information broadcasting, streaming live surgeries and back-office support
• Use UC tools for better engagement of customers, consultants, and back offices and integrate the same with Nurse calling systems.

For Pharmaceutical manufacturing solutions and solutions related to insurance please refer the home page of manufacturing and BFSI vertical.

For more information, please mail us on info@tandmconsultants.com.