Digitalization, vows to improve human life and make it more sustainable. It makes our life swift and easy, apart from it, digitalization also plays an important role in social change and giving us new patterns in our life. In just a matter of few years digitalization has changed almost every aspect of our world. From communication to commerce and from education to entertainment digitalization has given a new identity to all.
Like other fields, digitalization has introduced a new phase in the health sector also, making it more efficient, fast, reliable, and reachable. Due to digitalization only we are now able to book doctor appointments from our home, reserving slots of vaccines and even getting our reports on our devices.
All these qualities possessed by digitalization make a huge impact in various sectors including the healthcare system, specially in India.
Digital India and The National Health Policy (2017)
The Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi announced the campaign of digital India back in 2015 with the aim of boosting internet services in India, this campaign played the most important role in establishing digitalization in India. The campaign gave a new exposure to the Indian mass in the field of technology.
As a result when The National Health Policy of 2017 was introduced by the Indian Government, it gave a lot of focus to use more and more digitalization in the medical sector to increase its efficiency. As an example we can look at the service of E-Hospital application which provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online.
Later, in the year 2020 PM Modi also announced the National Health Digitalization Mission, making a big step to strengthen health infrastructure with the help of digitalization and also to “Universal Health Coverage in India.”
The Major Effects
Technology for better access; it has provided us with Digital health solutions which are powered by technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Adopting these with prevention, diagnosis and cure can help India run closer to the goal of digital health for all.
Furthermore, as today medical reports are mostly transferred online, it increases a lot of convenience for the public, reduces time and decreases the rush around medical departments.
Telehealth; a new concept introduced in the market of medication, allows the people to take medical consultation, prescriptions and even small treatment from doctors online through phones.
This scheme saw a very promising result in the covid times in India, the impact of this policy has become very high in always running big cities of India.
Digital diagnostics; It is another great effect of digitalization on the medical sector, it has given new advantages to ICT services such as cloud computing and 3D printing of organs of patients which helps in tracking health parameters in real time. It also helps in giving Predictive Analytics which make healthcare decision-making more robust and allow for doctor-patient interactions to become more empathic and care-based as opposed to hurried and transactional.
Online Medical Shopping; there are many companies today like pharmeasy and others which deliver medicines and other medical equipment to the people. This helps in ease of access of people and also increases the reachability of medicines to various corners, as well as boosts the economy of the medical sector.
Tracking; smart watches, phones and other digital devices today come with features to track pulse rate, calorie burns etc, which help us in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and reduce the chances of heart attack, obesity etc.
Conclusion
Medical sector is a very vast and important sector for our country, hence it requires moving hand in hand with the passing of time, and digitalization does this job for the medical department. In the future this digitalization will make us inevitable by finding cures for almost every health related issue we face in our life. So we should have full faith in it, amd should make efforts in promoting it.