Preparing India’s Workforce for this Era of 21st-Century Digital Health
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Advancing in digital health calls for a collaborative approach involving diverse skill sets from different healthcare sectors, including patients and their families.
By - Elliot B. Sloane
Abstract
This article explores the field of digital health in the 21st century, which is highly interdisciplinary and constantly evolving with innovations in medicine, science, and engineering. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital health technologies and trends, including telemedicine, virtual hospital care, and remote patient monitoring. However, there are numerous gaps in the field of digital health that need to be addressed, including the lack of digital health literacy among healthcare professionals and patients, cybersecurity, and data analytics. Cross-training and a good understanding of how technologies need to work together are necessary to provide seamless, safe, and reliable healthcare. The road ahead requires a collaborative effort from people with diverse skill sets, including patients and families, to create Healthcare 3.0, and India can become a global leader in this field.
Introduction
The digital health field of the 21st century is highly interdisciplinary and involves various sub-specialities in healthcare. Clinical and biomedical engineering covers a wide range of scientific and clinical disciplines that are constantly evolving with innovations in medicine, science, and engineering. Therefore, professionals in this field need to be adaptable to change. Recently, the American Hospital Association released a new toolkit for the workforce in the digital age, including a section specifically focused on technology.
Digital Health Era and Trends
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated Global Innovation and adoption.
- Tele-everything!” (Any newly coined term like Telemedical Care)
- Electronic records: Personal, Practice, Hospital and Governmental
- Remote patient monitoring and care (Virtualization)
- Leveraging info Technologies, System and Sciences
- AI, ML, Digital Twins & Processes/Devices/Clinicians Automation Tools
- Patient and Clinician-Centric systems and tools
- Patient engagement, empowerment, participation and responsibility
Due to the pandemic, many peer-reviewed articles related to digital health from around the world are now available for free.
Digital Health Topics & Publications SOARED since Feb 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
A survey reveals that there are over 10,000 articles related to telemedicine, 6,500 articles on machine learning, and 20,000 articles on virtual hospital care and home care. Apple has updated its portfolio to include remote patient monitoring apps, which is an area experiencing significant growth. Medtronic has partnered with a bio-intelligence technology to enable remote patient monitoring as a medical device, making them one of the largest implantable medical device manufacturers globally. Other players in this field, including GE and Philips, are relying on India for software development and support due to the country’s expertise in this area.
DH Workforce Gaps and Needs
Numerous gaps in the field of digital health need to be addressed. One of the most significant challenges is the lack of digital health literacy among physicians, nurses, allied health professionals, government officials, policymakers, families, and patients. This includes an inadequate understanding of cybersecurity, decision support systems, and data analytics. Furthermore, expectations and assumptions about digital health are often too high, given that it has been lagging behind e-commerce for two decades. There is a great deal of work to be done to stabilize and perfect the field.
In addition, there is a low level of healthcare literacy when it comes to information technology systems and systems sciences. While healthcare shares similarities with other e-commerce fields, there are unique aspects related to the critical nature of healthcare applications. Moreover, people do not comprehend how novel, chaotic, and inconsistent healthcare practices and processes can be, even within a single hospital or hospital system. Additionally, government policies and laws are often years or decades behind technological advancements in all areas.
Digital Health Literacy
Digital Health Literacy is lacking among healthcare professionals and patients, including physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals. They need to understand how the data they input into the system will affect data archives, analytics, machine learning, and other aspects of the system.
Errors such as spelling mistakes or typing errors can damage the utility of the system. Therefore, cross-training and a good understanding of how technologies need to work together are necessary for clinical information systems programmers, analysts, and clinical environmental engineers to provide seamless, safe, and reliable healthcare.
Security professionals, as well as entry-level new students who are joining the healthcare field from other industries, also need to understand the vocabulary, language, coding, nomenclature, and interoperability to achieve certification in healthcare and information management systems.
The digital health field can be broadly divided into four major areas:
- Digital health ecosystems
- Personally enabled health
- Measurement and improvement
- Strategy governance and organisational management.
To make progress in these areas, individuals with diverse skill sets and cross-training in these fields are required. It is essential to have a working knowledge of almost all of these areas to contribute effectively to the field, organization, and government.
Road Ahead
Moving forward in the field of digital health requires a collaborative effort that involves people with diverse skill sets from various aspects of the healthcare community, including patients and their families. The involvement of patients and their families in their care is increasing, and they are being given more responsibility.
Success Factors
In all levels of digital health, paying attention to details such as spelling, punctuation, and decimal points is critical to success. Data must be entered immediately, and automation is necessary to make these systems work. Building these systems takes time and requires consistent effort, day by day and week by week. Systems thinking is also important. Digital health has the potential to create healthcare 3.0, and India has the scientific and medical expertise to become a global leader.
Conclusion
The field of digital health is rapidly evolving and becoming increasingly important in healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation and adoption in this field, leading to an explosion in digital health topics and publications. However, there are still many challenges to overcome. To move forward, a collaborative effort is required involving people with diverse skill sets from various aspects of the healthcare community, including patients and their families. With consistent effort and attention to detail, digital health has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and create healthcare 3.0, with India well-positioned to become a global leader in this field.
