Covid-19 Accelerates the Digitization of Health Services
July 17, 2020
Digital transformation in the health care sector will be accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The creation of intensive care or ICU in the patient's home is even possible.
In fact, most of the health service delivery activities will be digitized. President of the Mayo Clinic Platform John D Halamka said, the characteristics of the Covid-19 pandemic that limited people's mobility were the driving force for this change.
“Covid-19 encourages us to provide health services digitally. This allows patient care and observation from home. I think 60 percent more aspects of health services will become virtual in the new normal," Halamka said while speaking at the Google Cloud Next '20 virtual seminar which was accessed on Thursday (16/7/2020).
The Mayo Clinic is a leading hospital and medical research center in the United States. The Mayo Clinic Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, tops the list of the best hospitals in the US for the 2019-2020 period.
Halamka reminded, for health service facilities, not to carry out digital transformation just for the sake of digitization. The digital transformation process must be carried out with a passion to improve services to patients as well as the performance of health workers.
One of the efforts to make it easier for patients is remote consultation. Halamka said that many aspects of health services will have a "store and forward" nature. This nature refers principally to the practice of indirect consulting.
For example, patients can send information such as photos of symptoms to doctors. The doctor will then analyze and provide recommendations also indirectly to the patient remotely.
In addition, digitization will also pave the way for virtual doctor visits and even roll out a standard intensive care unit (ICU) in patients' homes with remote supervision by health workers.
"For example, if someone is worried about a lump, he can take a picture and send it to his doctor," said Halamka.
With this direction of development, Halamka said, the security of platforms and internet networks is becoming increasingly important to maintain patient confidentiality and accompanying medical data.
The health sector is still lagging behind
However, on the other hand, the health sector is still lagging behind in cybersecurity aspects globally. Based on data from research by IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute, every data breach in the health sector causes a loss of 6.45 million US dollars. This loss is 65 percent greater than the average for all sectors.
In fact, according to the Senior Director of Healthcare of the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, Ryan Witt, the vulnerability of the healthcare sector will continue to increase with the closer relationship with digital technology.
“For doctors, remember Hippocrates' oath to protect the health of patients. In my opinion, protecting patient data is an integral part of protecting patient health," Witt said in a separate webinar on Thursday (16/7/2020).
Witt said the healthcare industry should be more aware of cyber threats. Ransomware attacks will drastically slow down hospital operations and disrupt patient care.
This incident has actually happened in Indonesia. In 2017, Dharmais Jakarta Cancer Hospital was hit by the WannaCry ransomware attack. All services, such as supporting examinations, administering drugs, and patient data are done manually so that it takes longer.
Hospital management has also updated the Windows operating system used, installed a more up-to-date antivirus, made copies and stored patient data, and maintained network installations (Kompas, 16/5/2017).
For this reason, said Witt, the practical thing that can be done by the health industry is to provide training to medical personnel on cyber hygiene. Cleaner cyber behavior reduces system risk and vulnerability to attacks.
“This training must be carried out regularly. Every new employee must also be required to take cyber training,” said Witt.
Obtained from:
https://bebas.kompas.id/baca/bebas-akses/2020/07/17/covid-19-akselerasi-digitalisasi-layanan-kesehatan/
