Chief Executive of the Health Informatics Society of Australia, Dr. Louise Schaper said that health is on the edge of a technological transformation that cannot be avoided which means all healthcare organisations will need to revise their business plans to incorporate these changes.
Dr. Schaper discussed a series of modernisations being developed in healthcare at present like HealthTap. It is an app that helps to supply universal healthcare and lessen health insurance figures by offering access to doctor-sourced healthcare data.
Another is OpenNotes which is a voluntary and free online service that offer patients with complete access to their GP’s notes. Then an app that creates stethoscopes and thermometers that can be used at home by patients which sends the recordings to medical professionals for assessment and this is called CliniCloud.
These apps are all increasing the democratisation and digitisation of the healthcare industry, which has huge implications for healthcare delivery and patient-doctor relationships.
Convenor of the RACGP Practice Owners Conference, Dr. Praskash Appanna, said that apps and artificial intelligence will replace GPs, however, will be forcing them to change on how to deliver healthcare using new methods.
Dr. Appanna stated an example of future use apps like Apple’s Mole Mapper which is created to evaluate moles for melanoma risk which may have a 100% accuracy rate in the near future, reducing the need to visit the GP, freeing up more time for them to focus on patients that need more immediate attention.
Dr. Appanna thinks that the development of the said technologies will need to be integrated into future GPs training. This training may also require to include best practices use patient data. Technology developments have very solid implications not only for healthcare delivery but also in issues like building design, according to Dr. Sean Stevens, Chair of the RACGP Business of General Practice Specific Interests Network, based on his experience at the practice he was at previously.
He is now designing a new practice and not bothered with the server room because everyone will be going to use cloud computing to manage their systems.
What do you think? Will technology overtake or aid GPs in treating patients in Australia?
