Healthcare Tech: How Science and Technology Are Making Patients’ Lives Easier

Health ⯀  

There are few things more difficult to deal with than a medical emergency. From finding the right doctor to grappling with insurance companies, getting quality care for you or your loved ones can often feel like an insurmountable challenge.

Thankfully, advances in technology have not only improved the quality and effectiveness of care, it’s also streamlined the process so that finding doctors, handling bill payments, and other tasks are much easier for patients to accomplish.

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Better Trained Professionals

Much of the medical profession’s prestige is due to the difficulty of obtaining the necessary education to be an effective doctor or nurse. However, online schooling has opened up education to a broader group of eager students, allowing those with the necessary drive to work in the healthcare field to get the necessary schooling more conveniently and affordably. More education opportunities means hospitals and doctors’ offices are able to meet staff demands, shortening wait time for patients to make the process easier. Likewise, the ease of taking courses means medical staff are more knowledgeable, making patients’ lives easier through higher quality care.

Thanks to online schooling, prospective nurses can complete the theoretical and lecture-oriented aspects of their program electronically. This is especially important since a recent decline in doctors within the United States, mostly due to a mass of coinciding retirements, has resulted in nurse practitioners stepping up to fill the void. Likewise, the decline of more individualized specialties among nurses like phlebotomy has increased their responsibility, requiring better education. Meanwhile, those looking to take on an administrative role in a hospital can earn an online master’s degree in health informatics or similar programs that prepare them for patient record keeping and other essential administrative operations.

Streamlined Patient Care

Not only has technology made education more affordable and accessible, but the programs themselves have evolved to emphasize treating the patient with respect both in and out of the exam room. Online programs for administrative professionals in the healthcare industry emphasize emotional intelligence (EQ), helping staff to be more sensitive, communicative and attentive. Hospitals that use EQ as a guiding principle have improved patient outcomes, and their patients are shown to be more satisfied with their overall care.

Technology supports this by giving administrative staff faster access to patient details, has simplified forms by making them digital, and made billing and setting appointments easier through email and SMS communication rather than relying on phone calls and mail. This streamlining of the patient experience through tech solutions matters as much as improvements within the realm of medicine, surgical techniques, and other forms of direct care.

A Patient Centered Approach

Overall, tech trends in the healthcare industry have moved beyond improvements to medicines, therapies, and medical equipment. Instead, new focus has been placed on improved patient care through streamlining billing and customer care to make the patient’s life easier. Administrative staff can more easily access the info needed to treat patients as individuals, and the patients themselves have faster access to care thanks to streamlining of billing, appointments, and other aspects that used to make getting quality care time consuming.

By  Dixie Somers	Embed
Author Bio - Dixie is a freelance writer who loves to write about business, finance and self improvement. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three beautiful daughters.