Abstract
This chapter explores how healthcare organizations utilized innovative healthcare informatics during the pandemic and how technology helped reduce healthcare delivery challenges. The unprecedented healthcare challenges created by the pandemic certainly warrant new and innovative tools to deal with healthcare requirements. Healthcare informatics undoubtedly played a significant role in smoothening healthcare operations during the pandemic, and it is expected to play a critical role in future healthcare operations. Health informatics tools such as telemedicine helped healthcare professionals to avoid unnecessary exposure to COVID patients, thus preventing many infections in healthcare organizations. This chapter presents healthcare informatics applications developed and used globally, including telemedicine, drug delivery portals, drones, robots, big data, AI, and many other sophisticated applications for remote healthcare access to patients.
TopBackground
The Coronavirus disease crisis compelled healthcare organizations and governments to accept and create rapid transformations to provide virtual patient care. To mitigate the effects of an unprecedented pandemic, the Centre for Disease Control, United States, created a “Framework for Healthcare Systems Providing Non-COVID19 Clinical Care” to assist healthcare providers in determining when in-person acute care is appropriate. Similarly, Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), and Australian healthcare accrediting bodies created guidelines to provide virtual care during pandemics (Anthony Jnr, 2020). Many countries such as India, China, and Arab countries also promoted virtual care with existing and new technologies; moreover, they invested heavily to transform healthcare service delivery. It is convincing that providers will continue to use advanced technologies and virtual care after the pandemic due to the merits of technology and innovations that happened during the pandemic. In addition, patient feedback after consulting online is better than expected in many parts of the globe to a large extent, as per various studies. Telehealth certainly can advance healthcare delivery in the future; however, it is essential to lift low-income countries to use innovative technologies by providing newer and affordable technologies and to get an advantage for patients across the globe.
Key Terms in this Chapter
5G: 5th generation wireless communication with higher speed, lower latency than previously available networks.
HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 protects sensitive patient health information and prevent disclosing health information without the patient’s consent.
EHR: Electronic health records are digital versions of patient records in a hospital or healthcare organisation.
SNOMED: Stands for Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine and it has systematically organised terms and codes used in medical care.
IoT: The Internet of things are physical objects with sensors that collect process and exchange data.
ICU: Intensive care unit treats critically ill patients with high medical and machine support if necessary.