Technology has revolutionised every facet of our lives, and healthcare is no exception. By integrating advanced technologies into patient care, healthcare providers are enhancing clinical excellence and transforming healthcare delivery.
According to Hein van Eck, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Mediclinic Middle East and possesses 20 years of experience in the private healthcare industry in South Africa and the UAE, five key technical breakthroughs have been instrumental in changing how healthcare is delivered. These are in the areas of telemedicine, AI and machine learning, robotics and automation, genetic sequencing, and wearable devices.
Improvement in accessibility
The use of telemedicine has increased exponentially, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed patients to access healthcare services from the comfort of their homes or offices, improving accessibility, allowing for more efficient management of chronic conditions, and reducing the burden on physical healthcare facilities.
Enhanced treatment outcomes
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have also been applied to various aspects of healthcare, including diagnostics, treatment planning, and predictive analytics. These technologies can analyse large datasets to identify patterns including predicting disease outbreaks, assisting in early disease detection, sometimes noticing indicators that may be missed by the human eye, and enhancing treatment outcomes.
Surgical precision and efficient operations
Robotics and automation are now more sophisticated. Advances in robotic surgery are allowing minimally invasive procedures to be carried out with enhanced precision and accuracy, leading to quicker recovery times and reduced complications. Automation has also been beneficial in managing administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments, managing patient records, improving the accuracy of coding, and assisting in revenue cycle management, freeing up more time for healthcare professionals to spend with patients.
Reduced costs
Technological advancements have significantly reduced the cost of genetic sequencing, and these improvements have paved the way for precision medicine, where treatments are tailored to the individual based on their genetic makeup, lifestyle, and environment. How to integrate this into everyday medical care is still evolving, however, and has a way to go.
Related: Diagnosing the future of sustainability in healthcare
Real-time monitoring
Wearable devices like smartwatches are also having an impact on healthcare. These devices can track an individual’s heart rate, sleep patterns and activity levels, and are increasingly being integrated with healthcare systems to monitor patients’ health in real time, helping to prevent disease and manage chronic conditions. Increasingly these technologies are also being used in the hospital setting to improve patient safety, early detection, and efficiency.
“Technology has revolutionised healthcare over the last 10 years, leading to huge advances in accuracy, safety, clinical outcomes, accessibility, the patient experience, and the extent to which we can tailor healthcare to the individual, with treatment modalities focused on ever smaller groups of patients,” Van Eck added.
Mediclinic Middle East, one of the UAE’s leading private healthcare companies, has been at the forefront in this aspect, harnessing the power of technology to enhance the quality of care and patient experience.
“The COVID-19 pandemic was a game changer not only for us, but every healthcare provider across the world and crystallised our thoughts on how we could use technology to better serve our patients. Our telehealth service was developed in the space of about one month, and despite the challenges we faced in terms of connectivity and behaviour change amongst both staff and patients, the service has gone from strength to strength,” he added.
Patient welfare at the core of operations
Mediclinic Middle East operates seven hospitals with almost 1,000 beds, and 29 outpatient facilities with clinics dedicated to IVF, dialysis and cosmetics, alongside several specialised units including two comprehensive cancer centres, and others focused on areas such as transplantation and stroke.
From a technologically progressive standpoint, the team at Mediclinic Middle East further established a dedicated portal where patients can access their health records and test results. Additionally, patients can manage appointments with a medical practitioner through an app without the need for human intervention.
“We were also one of the first UAE healthcare providers to partner with Malaffi in Abu Dhabi and Nabidh in Dubai to ensure that doctors across the UAE, not just in Mediclinic, could access patients’ medical records, facilitating greater accuracy and improved patient care,” he added.
Aligning themselves with the UAE’s Centennial 2071 vision, Mediclinic Middle East is in the process of utilising artificial intelligence and automation to enhance e-health delivery systems.
Related: Megatrends shaping healthcare in 2024
“We have started along this road with a project in revenue cycle management (RCM) to use AI technology to automate coding and improve accuracy and I am pleased to say that it is already boosting efficiencies and allowing our clinical staff to focus further on providing seamless continuity of care and a superior client experience for their patients,” he said, adding that the organisation now uses specially designed bots to drive speed and efficiency in RCM, HR functions, and medical records, driven by a newly established automation function at a group level.
Mediclinic Middle East’s notable achievements extend to implementing sophisticated surgical technologies, such as the da Vinci Xi HD 4 arm robotic system, for both adult and paediatric patients. As a result, the team has performed over 1,000 surgeries with outcomes that allow patients a better quality of life.
Mediclinic Precise, its genetic testing and profiling service, offers genetic testing carried out using the very latest sequencing technology at its specially commissioned precision medicine laboratory at Mediclinic City Hospital.
“Our multidisciplinary team of medical doctors, scientists, genetic counsellors, and molecular geneticists offers support to healthcare professionals and their patients affected by or at risk of suffering from a genetic disease. This also links to our newly established personalised medicine function which aims to create bespoke prevention and treatment plans based on an individual’s medical health history and genetic makeup,” said Van Eck.
Future plans
In addition to actively considering new growth opportunities, Mediclinic Middle East will focus on its patient digital offering, which involves enhancing the digital services available to them, including an eCommerce platform and B2C offerings.
“We also anticipate some significant developments in genetic profiling and personalised medicine and are entrenching our clinical collaboration with our Swiss counterparts Hirslanden in the areas of oncology and cardiology to continue to ensure we deliver world-class care in the UAE,” he concluded.
