What is digital health? It includes elements such as mobile health (mHealth), healthcare IT, wearable devices or telemedicine. Digital health solutions and tools help reduce inefficiencies, make quality healthcare more accessible and affordable, while also enabling a higher level of personalization for healthcare services. In this article, we will look into the state of digital health in 2024, analyzing available technologies and how they are changing over time. We invite you to read on.

Key Takeaways

• Digital health is the use of digital solutions to improve the overall quality of healthcare and overcome the main challenges (accessibility, high costs, etc.)
• Digital health tools make healthcare less expensive, more customized, quicker, and widely available for patients.
• The digital revolution is here, and we can only wait to see what wonders it will bring to healthcare.

What are the main digital health technologies? Namely:

• Chatbots and AI consultants,
• digital medical testing solutions,
• wearable monitors,
• digitized medical records,
• IoT devices.

You may also read: Can AI Help Your Physical & Mental Health?

What Is Digital Health?

Digital health is the term used to describe a broad field, regarding digitalization of healthcare. It may be associated both with administration (like storing medical records) as with a more clinical approach (for instance, remote diagnosing with the use of mobile apps).

This approach to healthcare has become extremely important recently. Organizations like WHO create plans and strategies towards the implementation of new digital health solutions and the key aims that can be achieved through them. And, this should not be surprising, considering what advantages this concept comes with.

The Benefits of Digital Health

To understand the importance and opportunities that come with digital health and wellness, let’s look at its advantages:

• Lower costs – Due to digital health records, or remote diagnosis, the overall costs of healthcare can be reduced. A physician can talk to more patients in the same period of time, scribes can quickly create and locate every patient’s records and many tests become cheaper, due to the possibility of conducting them via mobile phones, without the need to send samples to a laboratory.
• Better accessibility – Digital health companies and their solutions make it possible for people from all over the world to access quality healthcare with just a few clicks. This eliminates the problems in remote locations, where many specialists are unavailable.
• Improved quality – AI is capable of spotting patterns that a human would not, which means faster diagnosis, thus better, more effective treatments.
• Enhanced personalization – Due to collecting data in one, safe digital space, such an approach to health helps physicians tailor their prescriptions, tests and treatments to the individual needs of each patient.

Digital Health in 2024

With this lengthy introduction behind us, why don’t we look at all the excellent digital health solutions that are already available in 2024 and how they will affect the future of healthcare?

Chatbots and AI Consultants

AI consulting and chatbots are the first and foremost solutions that revolutionize healthcare. Their main advantage is that they can carry out the initial steps of the consultation without taking the time of the physician, letting doctors focus on those tasks that truly require their expertise.

Moreover, chatbots can be extremely helpful in spreading information and dispelling misinformation about certain diseases. An example of that could be seen in the efforts undertaken by the World Health Organization, which launched a COVID-19 chatbot in 2020, to combat fake news about the pandemic.

Digital Medical Testing

AI If you read our article on how our Scanbase diagnostic scanning API revolutionizes medical testing, you know that this is yet another digital health technology that brings powerful changes to the medical industry.

After all, patients no longer need to find laboratories near them that offer certain kinds of tests. Instead, they can get the initial results with the use of our mobile app. This is crucial for increasing healthcare accessibility, especially in the poorer regions of the world.

‍What will the future of healthcare bring in this case? More tests will be available in such digital solutions.

Wearables

Wearables are a digital health technology that truly changed the current approach to chronic disease treatment, in a positive way. With devices such as blood sugar or heart rate monitors, physicians can easily collect and access data on their patients.

Such remote diagnostics are, once again, excellent in terms of accessibility. However, they come with other benefits as well. The physicians get accurate data, and the patient themself does not have to worry about checks at the clinic since they won’t need to happen so frequently.

Digital Medical Records

While digital health records are already a thing, we may observe further development in this case as well. Due to the rising development of blockchain technology, these documents will become much more secure.

We also have to look from the perspective of healthcare professionals. Introducing digital health records has already made their jobs easier since when a patient goes from clinic to clinic, their history can be easily shared through IT systems, but with blockchains, it will become even easier – especially when several specialists from different facilities will need to work together. You can learn more in our article on blockchain in digital diagnostics.

IoT Devices

Finally, let’s look from the administrative side. The final digital health tool that we want to discuss is all kinds of IoT devices that can make the work of healthcare professionals easier, safer, and more efficient.

IoT trackers, for instance, can reduce hospital bed thefts and help nurses and physicians find the equipment they need effortlessly. Electronic badges are excellent to ensure that a facility is secure and its employees are safe since they can be used to locate healthcare staff and often come with panic buttons that nurses and physicians can press if there is an emergency.

The Future Is Here

As you can see, there are many digital health tools and solutions that are revolutionizing healthcare right now. While some of them are still only gaining recognition, the digital transformation has already started, and we can witness it with our own eyes.

Do you want to learn more about digital health solutions for medical professionals? Contact us and see what we can offer in terms of digital diagnostics!
Sources:
‍https://www.who.int/health-topics/digital-health#tab=tab_3
‍https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-launches-a-chatbot-powered-facebook-messenger-to-combat-covid-19-misinformation