Medical Software Development: Innovative Trends that will Redefine the Future of Health

1. Medical Software Development: Innovative Trends that will Redefine the Future of Health Modern medical software development technologies can reshape the future of healthcare delivery. A new digital era is emerging for the healthcare world and opens up incredible opportunities for enhancing patient care and health. Historically, healthcare has been slow to adopt new technology, but today, this industry is about to witness significant changes over the next several years. According to a new research report by Market Study Report, the Healthcare Information Technology (IT) Market will exceed USD 441.8 billion by 2025. But then, how do contemporary technologies shape the future of healthcare software development and what are the predictions for the future? How is this development going to affect patients and physicians? Ongoing and future development trends in healthcare would focus on the patient and physician experience. From being oriented completely on efficiency and results, the healthcare industry is now focused on the patient experience and strengthening the physician-patient relationship. This industry is moving from products and services to solutions. A few years ago, evidence-based care was more prominent and medical institutions relied on special equipment and hardware to deliver the same. Today, healthcare institutions are focused on real-time results. It is the time of medical platforms, big

2. data, and healthcare analytics. In the future, they will be focusing on preventive care, and it’s here that new healthcare technology trends will come into play. Let’s look at the current and upcoming trends in healthcare analytics and medical software development: Artificial Intelligence (AI): Artificial Intelligence in medicine and healthcare is gaining momentum. The opportunities that AI opens in healthcare are truly amazing and come in handy to make the right assessment, where even smart brains of medicine, who possess professional intuition and experience, find hard to make right decision. Artificial intelligence tools in healthcare can help physicians process large data, monitor patient health, and make important clinical decisions. AI-based technologies like robotics and machine learning have been introduced to the healthcare world. Areas in healthcare where AI has been introduced include: ✓ ✓Medical diagnosis: Use of AI applications in healthcare can significantly improve the speed and accuracy of the medical diagnosis. For example, IDx-DR is a FDA approved device with a software program that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze images of the eye taken with a retinal camera. Similarly, AI-based image recognition diagnostic devices are being used to diagnose dermatological and optical deviations, diabetes, and other diseases which cause appearance changes. ✓ ✓Virtual nursing assistants: According to Forbes, from interacting with patients to directing patients to the most effective care setting, virtual nursing assistants could save the healthcare industry $20 billion annually. Virtual nurses are available 24/7 to answer questions, monitor patients and provide quick answers. Care Angel, the world’s first virtual nurse assistant, can even provide wellness checks through voice and AI. ✓ ✓Drug development: Developing a new drug is a tedious task because researchers need to take into account hundreds of variables for finalizing a drug that are effective in treating a particular disease. AI is being used to optimize the search for the ideal drug formula and to safely explore chemical and biological interactions in the drug discovery process based on early-stage clinical data. ✓ ✓Surgery: AI robot assistants are being increasingly used for surgical procedures in gastroenterology, cardiology and more. The advantages of these AI technologies are the speed of image processing and visual clarity.

3. Some examples of AI in healthcare include: ✓Buoy Health, An Intelligent Symptom Checker. This AI system is used by Harvard Medical School to diagnose and treat patients more quickly. ✓IBM Watson, an AI-based system, was created to solve some of the world’s most pressing health challenges through data, analytics and AI. The IBM Watson Care Manager is a cloud-based care management solution designed to help organizations provide individual-centered care. ✓Google's DeepMind being used by the UK National Health Service to detect certain health risks through data collected via a mobile app. The AI health market is expected to grow more than 10 times by 2021. Block Chain: Though still a vague concept to many, many industry leaders in medical software development have been turning to blockchain. The unique features of blockchain are the ability to secure data and protect it from breaches, decentralized structure, transparency and consistency of the data stored in it. In coming years, this technology will help healthcare providers manage endless data — including patient health information, insurance claims, and electronic health records — and keep them safe and encrypted. Currently, this technology is used mainly in certain areas in the healthcare industry. They are: ✓Drug maintenance: To track the supply chain of drugs (a real example: MediLedger Project) ✓Patient Data Management ✓Data security in clinical trials ✓Medical insurance claims Internet of medical things (IoMT): The use of IoT in the medical industry is very impressive. IoT in Medical is used for remote monitoring of the patient’s health through wearable’s (including ECG and EKG monitors), smart sensors, and mobile apps. The number of Medical IoT devices has grown from 56.5 million in 2017 to 125.4 million in 2018 (www.anadea.info). And by 2020, it is expected that up to 30 billion IoMT devices will be deployed worldwide (www.stfalcon.com).For example, the Apple Watch Series 4 is one recent IoMT wearable device introduced in healthcare. This particular device is capable of measuring heart rate, counting calories burned, and even detecting a fall and call emergency numbers. ✓Wearables are combined with advanced software that can help detect, cure and prevent diseases. They are responsible for capturing patient data, advancements in artificial intelligence

4. and machine learning where they put software at the heart of application innovation. However, it makes very difficult for wearable devices when it comes to integrating hardware. The integration of hardware with wearable devices is not easy since many medical wearable devices are proprietary and closed systems. To avoid this, wearable sensors need to be abstracted into a simplified and easy to integrate platform so that developers can focus on the application. MedTech Intelligence recently reported that combining wearable sensors with data connectivity options for virtually any type of application can surpass this problem. The ability to easily integrate hardware and software into a single solution solves a variety of issues for developers so they can focus on their specific medical application. ✓Telemedicine is also one of the most obvious mixes of the IoT and medicine. With telemedicine, patients do not need to visit emergency rooms or physicians. Physicians use remote monitoring to evaluate patients and make informed decisions about their health. It also helps reduce the costs associated with a hospital visit. Augmented and virtual reality: From diagnosis to medical education, augmented and virtual reality proposes significant advances to healthcare technologies. A wide range of illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, are treated already with this technology. While with virtual reality (VR), the person emerges in totally artificially created surroundings, augmented reality (AR) generates images that can be layered on the top of real- world objects. In both cases, the user can see the created imagery or text with the help of VR/AR glasses, while their hands stay free (www.stfalcon.com). The major applications of VR/AR technology today are: emergency response, prevention and diagnostics, surgery, education. rehabilitation and emotional recovery. Science and technology is performing miracles in healthcare industry and the overall healthcare technology trend is toward preventive care, enhanced patients experiences, lower expenses, and big data processing. The healthcare software development has become more sophisticated and innovative. A reliable provider of medical SEO services would prove to be a valuable partner for healthcare businesses looking to develop innovative software applications. 8596 E. 101st Street, Suite H 200 Broadhollow Road, Suite 207 Tulsa, OK 74133 Melville, NY 11747