The adoption of electronic health records (EHR) during the past decade has reached critical mass. According to the latest data from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 96% of acute care hospitals in the United States are using EHR systems. The resulting deluge of patient data has created a treasure trove of information that will help diagnose diseases earlier and improve patient outcomes by finding optimal courses of treatment. Recent advances in big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning are on the verge of making all of that patient information even more useful. And although it may take years to come to fruition, blockchain is being explored as one possible solution to maintaining the privacy and security of all of this sensitive patient data. Some of the technologies driving health care innovation have yet to mature, but they are already bringing a data-driven, patient-focused future of medicine closer to reality.
Major players in the tech industry are also collaborating to allow seamless sharing of information among their systems. In August , Amazon, Microsoft and others who are working on EHR platforms released a joint statement expressing their commitment to improving access to health care interoperability technologies.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved an AI tool called IDx-DR that analyzes images of the back of a patient’s eye to scan for diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. This is just the first government approval of an AI program to make diagnoses without a doctor’s interpretation. In the meantime, researchers are also working on software to analyze lab results and detect such diseases as cancer and lung disease .
One example of its current application in health care is Change Healthcare’s blockchain app , which they created to track the status of claims. Though blockchain is relatively new, I believe it will ultimately provide hospitals with more secure, productive and efficient ways of dealing with back-end administrative work so that providers can truly focus on treating their patients.