The coronavirus pandemic ushered in a new era of technological innovation. Nowhere is this easier to see than in the healthcare sector.
Technology has already been revolutionizing patient care in various ways for the past few decades. However, the pandemic created a new layer of urgency that accelerated the adoption of many new technological forms of treatment.
Some of these developments are dramatic and exciting. But often, the impact of tech takes on more of a quiet-yet-critical flare.
Here are a few of the ways that tech is modestly impacting post-pandemic healthcare at the moment.
1. Navigating Cancer
Navigating Cancer is a health tech company that leverages technology to help improve the lives of cancer patients throughout their cancer journey. One of the ways it’s doing this is through their PRO (patient-reported outcome) driven platform.
The PRO platform is a patient-centered, digital platform that helps cancer patients stay up to date with symptom and medication management. Patients can conveniently connect to the PRO platform with their smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, remaining connected to their care team 24/7.
Navigating Cancer’s platform also helps patients get updates on various questions, tests, and other needed data. Patients can even receive personalized healthcare instructions sent directly from their providers.
Along with capturing patient feedback, the oncology-focused company helps connect patients to the larger cancer community and loved ones. Patients are also supplied with personalized patient education materials to help make well-informed healthcare decisions.
While Navigating Cancer’s PRO platform is patient-focused at its core, it also integrates and provides benefits to the greater oncology community, pharmaceutical companies, providers, and other partners. For instance, providers and cancer care programs utilizing Navigating Cancer’s technology have reported improved patient-provider communication, satisfaction, and reduced costs.
Navigating Cancer is filling an important role in the healthcare community during a time that has placed excessive pressure on healthcare providers. Believing that patients with better care experiences can experience more positive health outcomes, the platform effectively manages data and facilitates clinical communication to ensure providers and patients alike have all of the information they need to make smart, informed decisions.
2. GoodRx
GoodRx is a tech company that is blazing a new trail when it comes to filling prescriptions. The company operates on the conviction that “everyone deserves affordable and convenient healthcare.”
With that as the end goal, GoodRx has developed a technological tool that helps consumers find the best market price for medication. The price of pharmaceuticals tends to vary — and often by dozens or even a hundred dollars — from one pharmacy to the next.
GoodRx’s system combs through all available options and finds the best deals. It also locates coupons and discounts that can be applied at tens of thousands of pharmacies across the U.S.
Along with prescription savings, the innovative brand also offers a streamlined and affordable telemedicine option. Rather than waiting for weeks to see a doctor in person, the tool helps patients book same-day doctor’s appointments at low price points.
GoodRx is a fascinating tech company in the healthcare space. Most companies that make the headlines are focused on cutting-edge medical procedures or tools. However, GoodRx has made its name on the other end of the healthcare spectrum.
It has honed in on patient-facing activities, like navigating the dull yet overwhelming world of prescriptions without breaking the bank. It may not be as flashy as many other areas of healthcare tech, but it’s a necessary area to address, nonetheless.
3. Sensyne Health
Sensyne Health is a tech-driven company with a vision. The company uses AI to accurately connect a broad group of individuals including patients, researchers, life science companies, clinicians, and healthcare providers.
The use of AI allows Sensyne to find optimum pairings and ideal matches throughout the healthcare system. Its vast repository of information also helps to better patient care, improve medical research, and accelerate the development of new medicines.
Sensyne Health is in the information industry, and they make no secret of that fact. The company operates on the desire to create a platform that facilitates “the ethical application of clinical artificial intelligence and the creation of a trusted data community.”
In other words, the data that Sensyne Health gathers is kept tightly under wraps. Right on the company’s home page, it states that information is never shared and data never leaves the company’s coffers.
However, within those parameters, Sensyne Health is able to offer a multi-faceted world of good. On the one hand, it creates ideal connections between patients and providers. On the other hand, it uses its data to improve patient outcomes and advance the efficacy of the healthcare industry as a whole.
4. IntelyCare
IntelyCare is a company focused on the providers — particularly the heroes who work the frontlines in facilities across the healthcare sector. The tech solution offers an elite staffing and scheduling platform designed to revolutionize how healthcare providers staff their operations.
The app enables a unique sense of management and efficiency throughout the scheduling process. It takes input information and uses automation to create and optimize the best schedule possible. This removes the common struggle that many healthcare companies have with the manual scheduling process.
In many industries, IntelyCare would be little more than a glorified scheduler. But there are few areas of business as chaotic to structure as the healthcare industry. In addition, the consequences of failure are often dire.
From hospital staff to nursing home employees, making sure the right number of people are working or on call at any given moment is essential. And yet, it doesn’t change the fact that maintaining an air-tight schedule can be a nightmare.
IntelyCare is trying to remove that issue through the use of technology. It strives to take into account existing personnel and availability and then compute the best possible scheduling solution. It even offers flexible adjustments for those who want to pick up extra shifts, as well.
Practical Tech in the Healthcare Field
When technology is brought up in healthcare, it’s often associated with dramatic activities. Robotic brain surgery and 3D printed skin grafts too often take center stage.
However, it’s less flashy companies like Navigating Cancer and GoodRx that often make the biggest difference. They take existing tech and use it to address the nitty-gritty details that so often muck up the gears of the healthcare system.
From communication to scheduling, prescription shopping to accountability, there are many ways that tech companies are quietly making a difference in the healthcare community. And with the world moving toward an ever-greater dependency on technological operations, it’s likely that we’ll only see more of the same in the future.