For most of history, healthcare has revolved around personal patient-doctor relationships. Face-to-face consultations, doctor’s authority, physical records, and reactive treatment have been prevalent since the dawn of modern medicine.

Although this model succeeded in maintaining patient privacy, issues like limited accessibility, staff overburdening, administrative overhead, and lack of patient engagement have hampered it in recent years. As the future of healthcare evolves, providers are working to keep up with patient expectations.

What’s driving the future of healthcare?

While consumer expectations in general have long been on the rise, the impact of COVID-19 cannot be overstated. The world experienced its worst during the pandemic when the entire healthcare system was overwhelmed and struggled to meet the unprecedented surge in demand.

For instance, even a year into the pandemic, 90% of nations had one or more of their essential health services disrupted. The US, tragically leading the world with over 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths, also saw a staggering 41% of adults avoiding or delaying medical care by June 2020 due to the pandemic.

However, technology has come to the rescue of the dwindling healthcare system. Several advancements in healthcare technology, such as telehealth, EHRs, wearables, and AI, have the potential to make healthcare more patient-friendly and revive hospitals, clinics, and medical practices.

In this article, we explore evolving patient preferences, how healthcare providers can leverage technology to build consumer trust, and what lies in the future of healthcare.

How technology is enabling the evolving consumer healthcare experience

Ever since the pandemic-induced lockdowns have disrupted access to traditional healthcare, people have increasingly moved to technology-driven healthcare. Virtual consultations, EHR platforms, and care-at-home delivery models have sprouted up in response to the growing demand for accessible healthcare.

Moreover, patients now demand an active role in their own healthcare, seeking transparency and asking proactively for information regarding their treatment and well-being. The passage of the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016 encourages EHR interoperability, empowering patients to access their medical histories and receive personalized treatments from healthcare providers.

Furthermore, the isolation enforced by the pandemic has paved the way for telemedicine, or virtual healthcare, to revolutionize the way practices provide value-based care to their patients. This technology is particularly useful to populations living in rural and underserved regions, which are hit the hardest by the risk of hospital closures owing to financial losses.

Conversely, per an AMA case study, including telemedicine not only improves healthcare providers’ financial and administrative outcomes but also patient experience and outcomes, accessibility, clinician satisfaction, and health equity.

Several technological innovations provide healthcare providers with the means to revitalize their practices and build a more resilient and patient-centric future. Here are a few of them:

• Telemedicine: Telemedicine, or telehealth, bridges geographical barriers, providing convenient and accessible care to remote and underprivileged communities. By offering remote consultations, at-home diagnostics, and online prescriptions, you can enhance patient access and outcomes, reduce wait times, alleviate clinicians’ burdens, and improve overall efficiency.

• Electronic Health Records (EHRs): With a central and interoperable repository of patient data, you can allow the seamless exchange of patient health information (PHI) through EHRs, thereby improving the overall patient experience. It enables authorized users across the industry to share patient data meaningfully, enhancing preventive care, supporting early disease detection, and ensuring high-accuracy treatment continuity.

• Wearable Devices and Health Apps: Remote monitoring tools and wearable medical devices provide real-time patient data, which you can use to track your consumers’ health conditions and prescribe personalized treatment options. With interactive mobile apps, you can empower patients to manage their health through medical awareness proactively. Additionally, collecting patient-generated data can help you gain valuable insights to enhance patient satisfaction and optimize care delivery.

Along with these technologies, you can also incorporate advanced tools like AI-powered diagnostics, predictive modeling, AR/VR technology, and remote patient monitoring (RPM) to further enhance your care delivery model and better address the evolving needs of patients.

5 ways tech adoption can benefit healthcare providers

Adopting healthcare technology not only enhances patient experience (PX) and employee experience (EX) but also benefits healthcare providers in several ways:

1. Better Patient Care & Streamlined Operations

   Using EHRs and task automation can help you substantially improve your practice. Besides being cost-effective, they provide several other benefits, such as

   • Furnishing up-to-date and accurate information regarding patient’s medical history
   • Secured sharing of EHRs with other clinicians and patients
   • Improving medical decision-making through accurate diagnoses and enabling personalized treatment
   • Empowering patients by increasing their engagement through active participation
   • Helping providers reduce medical inaccuracies and deliver safer care
   • Saving time and reducing paperwork for administrative staff through automated workflows
   • Automating appointment scheduling, inventory management, and billing systems
   • Reducing doctors’ burnout and freeing them to focus on providing quality care

2. Data Analytics

   Imagine you can have a direct line to what your patients think and feel about the care your practice provides. Feedback systems allow healthcare leaders and practices to regularly gauge their patients and employees for their ideas, attitudes, and concerns.

   By gathering and analyzing patient/clinician feedback, you can identify areas for improvement, such as staff performance, patient satisfaction, brand awareness, practice reputation, and more, through data-driven analytics derived from HCHAPS-ready surveys and strict HIPAA-compliant protocols. Plus, providers can predict patient demand, optimize staffing levels, and prevent equipment shortages by analyzing large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.

3. Big Data & Cloud

   The integration of big data and cloud is yet another area of technology that can be immensely useful to healthcare providers. Cloud infrastructure provides a scalable architecture to store and analyze massive volumes of healthcare data, from patient records to clinical trials. With big data analytics, providers can tap into valuable patient and clinician insights to improve processes, reduce costs, enhance patient care, and provide job satisfaction to clinicians and administrative staff.

   In addition, this powerful combination has the potential to drive advancements in diagnostics, RPM, personalized treatment, and fraud detection. The future of healthcare is data-driven, with big data and the cloud able to realize its full potential.

4. Patient Empowerment & Education

   Since patients are at the center of the healthcare system, providers must shift towards a value-based and patient-centric care delivery model. Using technological innovations like intelligent health apps, wearables, and online resources, practices can empower patients to make informed decisions and take charge of their health and well-being.

   These technologies can help patients monitor their health conditions, track critical symptoms, and handle chronic illnesses more efficiently. Plus, online platforms can provide them with the required educational materials and community support, allowing them to better engage in their healthcare journeys and achieve improved health outcomes.

5. Telemedicine & Predictive Modeling

   With 192 rural hospital closures and conversions in the US since 2005, remote communities are experiencing a healthcare crisis. Medical practices can solve this crisis by including telemedicine in their services to attract new patients and retain current ones while increasing their revenue streams. Offering virtual consultations and remote monitoring services can also reduce overhead costs associated with infrastructure and staffing.

   Moreover, AI-driven predictive analytics can help providers identify high-risk patients and provide proactive interventions, preventing costly complications and hospitalizations. They can also enable medical professionals to develop targeted preventive care programs based on population health data, potentially increasing patient inflow and improving overall community health.

Building trust is fundamental to the future of healthcare

Emerging technologies like generative AI, conversational AI, machine learning (ML), and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) are aiding the profound transition of healthcare from fee-for-service models to value-based care in a concerted effort to promote a patient-centric approach.

However, implementing technology in healthcare is not an end in itself. Rather, it’s how we use it to gain public trust. Patients who trust the tech-based healthcare system are more likely to engage with medical providers to manage their health. With a massive erosion of trust in the US healthcare system, especially by marginalized communities, providers must demonstrate their practice’s value and gain the trust of various stakeholders.

In essence, healthcare providers must prioritize the following elements to promote patient-centric care where technology serves as a bridge between them and their patients and not a barrier:

1. Data Privacy and Security

One of the key areas where you can build consumer trust in health tech is data privacy and security. The US healthcare industry saw a 128% surge in cyberattacks from 2022 to 2023, per government data. Without sufficient data protection measures, no provider can expect to achieve success in digital healthcare initiatives. The trick is establishing a highly secure patient data handling and transfer mechanism that implements strong data encryption and cybersecurity measures. Plus, providers must ensure transparency with a focus on patients’ understanding of how their medical information is used and who can access it.

2. Effective Patient Engagement

Another way your practice can attract more patients is by communicating the benefits of healthcare technology and how it can make their lives better and healthier. You can do this by conducting surveys and distributing educational materials regarding the advances in medical science and healthcare technology. Moreover, you can also highlight patient testimonials and healthcare journeys to showcase the real-life impact of technology on patient care, encouraging more patients to choose your practice.

Drive future growth based on value-based care

While using healthcare technology has several benefits, implementing it haphazardly can harm your medical practice. It’s crucial to build consumer trust in healthcare through patient education, robust data security, transparency, compliance with data protection regulations (like HIPAA), and following industry best practices.

Healthcare providers, policymakers, and tech leaders must come together to build a future in which healthcare technology is used to enhance care delivery responsibly and ethically, with a focus on patient autonomy and data privacy.

Adopting technology with a patient-first approach can take healthcare providers a long way toward a value-based care model. Besides financial stability, it leads to improved patient outcomes and satisfaction, promoting a more sustainable and equitable healthcare system.

Ready to build a deeper understanding of your patients’ core values? Learn how Sogolytics can help!