Stethoscope, lab coat and tablet? Here’s how digital tech is reshaping your healthcare experience

Picture a doctor and you probably envision someone making rounds in a white coat, flipping through paper charts. It’s the classic image – but it’s changing. Doctors still wear white coats, but today, they’re more likely to carry a tablet or 2-in-1 device, and communicate with their colleagues and patients via a mobile phone or wearable device.

And that’s just while visiting patients.

From the reception desk to the hospital hallway to the doctor’s office, innovative digital technologies are reshaping the healthcare landscape at every step of the delivery process to reduce costs and improve outcomes. In inpatient settings, digital solutions are making hospital visits faster, improving the patient experience, and transforming the concept of medical versus consumer technologies. In outpatient settings, technology is helping care teams to monitor patients, virtualize patient care, and encourage healthy behaviors. It all adds up to a better, more engaged healthcare experience.

In-Hospital

To start, digital innovations are helping hospitals run more efficiently while creating new treatment opportunities.

See our interactive infographic on four steps to a Smart Patient Experience

Paperless check-in solutions – like the one created by Hyland OnBase – create faster, more seamless patient experiences, eliminating the need to fill out countless forms. Today, customized tablets can prompt for the relevant information and save data to a HIPAA-compliant, secure, cloud-based server. During the appointment itself, doctors and nurses can then quickly look up the patient information on their mobile devices. If they need patient permission to authorize a procedure, the provider can immediately bring up the relevant form. The result is a faster appointment process with less paper and less stress.

At the same time, doctors are leveraging digital innovations for new treatment options. For example, clinical trials are currently evaluating the impact of virtual reality (VR) as a therapeutic tool to reduce pain, stress, and anxiety for hospitalized patients. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, based in Los Angeles, CA, in a partnership with Applied VR and Samsung Electronics, is conducting a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of VR on pain for hospitalized patients. Early results indicate that VR can be an effective tool to not only reduce pain, but potentially decrease narcotic use. VR has also been shown in other studies to improve outcomes for a variety of conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder, spinal cord injury, stroke, dementia, and macular degeneration to name a few.

In-Home

New technologies are also creating opportunities to improve care coordination and patient engagement after discharge from the hospital.

Tablets and wearable smartwatches are helping healthcare providers proactively monitor patients with chronic conditions. With Vivify Health – a remote patient monitoring solution – patients can track their biometric data and send the results to their care team, without the need for any intrusive tests or inconvenient hospital appointments. They can also look up their treatment plan and easily connect with their doctor if they have any concerns or questions.

In addition, IoT-enabled devices have the potential to help seniors live independently and in their own home or apartment—lessening the need for extended visits from a caregiver or a transfer to an assisted living facility. By making daily activities easier and less stressful, connected devices can help seniors and those with disabilities handle daily tasks independently. Sensors throughout the home and wearable devices can notify care teams or loved ones if anything is amiss—such as if the senior has fallen or if their vital signs have changed.

In-Health

Finally, digital tools are empowering us to improve our own daily health habits.

For instance, all-in-one health and fitness apps like Samsung Health (formerly S Health) are more than just for tracking your workouts, counting your calories, and competing with friends and family on daily steps. Samsung Health enables the capture of biometric data from devices such as weight scales, glucometers, and smart watches and facilitates the sharing of data with care providers.

And now, telehealth services are putting licensed healthcare professionals in our pockets. The telehealth platform on Samsung Health – in partnership with American Well and leading healthcare organizations – is giving anyone, anywhere, and at any time access to a healthcare provider at an affordable price.

Whether you live in a rural area, can’t take time away from work, or are traveling in a new place, telehealth enables you to videoconference with a board-certified physician. All you need to do is unlock your phone and open the app. From there, you provide your insurance or credit card information (just once, upon the initial visit), and you then are connected via video conference to a licensed medical professional who can discuss symptoms and treatment, offer a diagnosis, and even send a prescription to a nearby pharmacy for you to pick up. Telehealth gives patients access to treatment and helps them feel better sooner. Meanwhile, doctors can care for patients more easily and hospitals don’t have to worry about overloading system resources. 

When you think about a doctor, you may not be thinking of a virtual reality device, the Internet of Things, or a mobile app. But very soon, you will be. Digital health solutions are transforming how we think about healthcare in the hospital, the home, and everywhere in between – helping medical professionals provide a more seamless and efficient healthcare experience, and helping patients to live longer, happier, and healthier lives.