The digitisation of health services through new information technologies - broadly known as "eHealth" - has the potential to dramatically improve the healthcare experience for patients.
In Canada, a national electronic healthcare programme is projected to offer gross savings of more than US$80 billion (Dh293.84bn) over a 20-year period. In Saudi Arabia, the national electronic health record could save the country in excess of $30bn a year, with healthcare payers and providers benefiting most. While these programmes typically require a substantial upfront investment, they deliver value over the long term, with cost advantages that grow as more people join the system.
"Open Health Tools looks forward to joining with HIMSS to provide real-world value and accelerate innovation through health IT infrastructure and tools that enable better care and better health at lower cost," said Dr. Rob Kolodner, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Open Health Tools. "This collaboration is another step toward our future vision of an agile, ubiquitous health IT ecosystem capable of responding to the rapidly evolving functional and interoperability needs of a Learning Health System."
Read more: Open Health Tools And HIMSS To Collaborate On Supporting Healthcare Standards Development
Nanosensors patrolling your bloodstream for the first sign of an imminent stroke or heart attack, releasing anticlotting or anti-inflammatory drugs to stop it in its tracks. Cell phones that display your vital signs and take ultrasound images of your heart or abdomen. Genetic scans of malignant cells that match your cancer to the most effective treatment.
In cardiologist Eric Topol's vision, medicine is on the verge of an overhaul akin to the one that digital technology has brought to everything from how we communicate to how we locate a pizza parlor. Until now, he writes in his upcoming book The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care, the "ossified" and "sclerotic" nature of medicine has left health "largely unaffected, insulated, and almost compartmentalized from [the] digital revolution." But that, he argues, is about to change.
Digital technology might make caring for your health more effective one day soon, but is it beneficial to have that much data? Sharon Begley asks in a Scientific American review.
According to the UN agency for information and communication technology, the CTOs stressed that reliable, interoperable standards are key to providing patients and health professionals with the means to utilize remote consultation services, advanced ICT-based diagnostic procedures and electronic health information services.
Read more: Global technology leaders call for faster progress on e-health standards