Digital Healthcare and Primary Care Physicians
When most people think of innovation in healthcare, they’re likely to think in terms of biotech, life sciences and medical devices. However, some of the biggest revolutions in healthcare today are being driven by a new source: the same entrepreneurs who brought us smartphones and “Ubers” for anything are turning their attention to fixing our health systems.
Increasingly, “digital health” technologies are serving to extend and augment the potential of every doctor, open up totally new treatments, and increase accessibility by making care more cost-effective. Here’s a list of a few key ways the world of digital health startups are tackling global health systems’ biggest challenges.
Digital healthcare and primary care physicians
Primary care physicians have played the role of a gateway and guide to the rest of the healthcare system for patients. General practitioners help a layperson identify and classify health issues, provide guidance about which specialists to go to, and alongside nurses to manage a patient’s life-long health journey. This is a critical element of our health systems. Populations with access to primary care exhibit overall better lifetime health outcomes and lower per-capita admissions to emergency care.
Globally, we’re facing an impending crisis resulting from a lack of general practitioners. In the western world, this has hit first in rural areas. The developing world is facing strained resources everywhere as over a billion individuals are entering the middle class and demanding service. There is a need to dramatically scale-up the potential of each physician, and a crop of new digital health startups is pioneering new approaches to accomplishing physician‘s’ jobs faster and with lower costs.
How do you think digital healthcare will affect the roles of primary physicians? Is digital healthcare the solution to the ongoing demands? What kind of problems could new startups face with digital healthcare?