As we enter 2022, the pandemic continues to cause terrible human and economic losses. But one side effect of this crisis has helped healthcare make significant progress: We have experienced a decade of technological adaptation and adoption in just a few months.
Tools and technologies that have been lingering (or stagnating) on the edge of the industry moved from the periphery to the core of healthcare IT almost overnight. High-speed research and epidemiological infrastructure, remote work and telemedicine systems, rapid vaccine development and deployment models—all of these suddenly become urgent public health necessities. All of this is achieved by leveraging the cloud to support integrated operations, data science, and massive on-demand computing needs.
If there is any silver lining to this terrible event in history, it is Yun’s courtesy. When you invest in innovation and unleash it through agile technology, the past two years have really shown us the possibilities of healthcare. I predict that more cloud-driven healthcare advances will be made in three key areas:
Vaccine development
In terms of vaccines, the game has changed. Before the epidemic, mRNA vaccine It has been in development for about three years, but it has been hampered by hesitation and preference for the status quo. Covid’s response forced the technology to cross the finish line, and its success will affect more than just the spread of the coronavirus. It is already encouraging people to take bolder methods to deal with other great threats to human health.
Using mRNA technology, vaccine development and deployment will change from a multi-year activity to a months-long activity. We will need a new regulatory framework to cope with this speed. In the United States, the only reason we were able to obtain Covid vaccination so quickly was because the FDA issued an emergency authorization-the development time frame and the standard process of clinical trials are usually longer and more arduous. However, a large amount of scientific foundation has been laid for messenger RNA technology, which supports and realizes accelerated actions. More importantly, this action proved that we can safely deploy the speed and efficacy of new vaccines.
Assuming we can develop a regulatory framework update to address this change in capabilities, I think we will start to see faster development of vaccines against known pathogens-trials for certain specific pathogens are already underway cancer, be opposed to malariaAnd oppose AIDS virus. We will also be able to respond more quickly to future epidemics.
Coronavirus disease Has killed more Americans Instead of the infamous 1918 Spanish flu. This will not be the last pandemic. This will happen again, but we are beginning to master the power of new tools to deal with future threats. In order to use them, we need to make major upgrades to the agility of development and IT models, because we will need the ability to manage more clinical trials faster than in the past.this It turns out that the cloud is essential In that process. It’s time to bend and adjust. I am excited about how cloud technology can help accelerate regulatory innovation and clinical trial innovation to support this mission.
Telemedicine release
As the pandemic unfolds, the use of telemedicine has skyrocketed, driven by physical distance requirements and responsive regulatory/reimbursement changes.according to McKinsey, “In April 2020, the overall telemedicine utilization rate for office visits and outpatient care was 78 times that of February 2020.” Once again, with the help of cloud computing capabilities, existing but underutilized technologies have been rapidly expanded To meet unprecedented demand. Although the utilization rate has stabilized in the summer, the number of telemedicine claims has always maintained nearly 40 times the number before the pandemic. The convenience factor has staying power. The ability to not have to see a doctor will not disappear.
Further enhancement and expansion of telemedicine and telemedicine applications is one of many applications Cloud-based IT opportunities Inspire the health sector to explore new directions. For example, virtual care is great because it allows remote healthcare professionals to get help in a timely manner, but it does not allow them to reach you. They cannot look at your ears, wipe your nose, or measure your blood pressure. Therefore, as telemedicine matures, secondary and tertiary services will begin to develop in parallel.
For example, home-based health monitoring equipment will soon find new and more medically integrated applications. The role of tech-savvy home health workers may also be redefined. At the other end of the telemedicine conference, nurses and assistants become the eyes and ears of doctors. Imagine a group of distributed healthcare professionals who meet with patients at home and communicate with doctors returning to the office at the same time, or visiting nurses use a set of connected devices to monitor patients at home and remotely report the results to their doctors.
Such services are convenient for everyone, but they will shine in people who cannot easily access medical services. Consider the plight of rural America. They must drive for several hours to reach the nearest medical facility. Advanced technology can help. In addition to the almost unlimited cloud capacity, 5G It is upgrading to solve the main limiting factor of the rural population’s telemedicine problem-bandwidth.Plus Starlink, Boeing and Kuiper In other areas of the race to build satellite broadband, the ubiquitous connection of virtual care is imminent. This is good news for American farmers, and it is also good news for Brazilian natives who need to walk 14 days to the nearest medical facility. Realizing the global accessibility of virtualized healthcare through this combination of technologies is about to begin, and we will begin to see real applications as early as next year.
Let the data make a difference
We can look forward to another meaningful development in the coming year is the integration of different medical care-related data sets in history to make more insightful decisions.Dream is Precision medicine We are getting closer and closer to realizing it. Usually, we have clinical data in the repository, genomic data in the repository, and behavioral health data in the repository. But the connection between them is often elusive. Historically, these data sets are kept separately. Fusing them together can create a more comprehensive view, and cloud-based healthcare IT can achieve this convergence. Assuming good care coordination, the treatment team will have a better ability to solve all the things that happen to the patient instead of different elements.
Consider breast cancer treatment, where Certain gene sequences Start to inform care. As the medical community explores cloud-based molecular modeling, combined with genetic insights and clinical insights into the condition of specific patients, they can abandon the sledgehammer method and start building customized treatment plans for specific individuals based on the combination of all these factors. In the past, the huge data sets required to accommodate such functions were very expensive. The computing power required to actually complete this work is also very expensive. But this is no longer the case. Cloud Power is very economical, which reduces cost barriers and makes everything feasible. Processing unimaginable large data sets and combining them with massive amounts of computing power unleashes millions of well-trained machine learning models to inform clinical decisions in real time, taking all these factors that make up a person into account-this Will significantly improve clinical results. We will be able to deal with disease progression that occurs in individual patients and how it statistically occurs in different populations.
Technicians in the healthcare field tend to spend their time on the “how” to keep the medical system running and moving forward. As we look forward to the new year, it is best to reflect on some amazing “things” that have already been accomplished and prepare for the things that are about to come. Most importantly, we should never ignore the “why” that gives us the purpose of our work. Now and in the future, through cloud computing capabilities guided by outstanding information technology professionals, amazing advances in human health become possible.
Photo: shylendrahoode, Getty Images
