Precision Health Challenge 2021-22

Precision medicine is the customization of healthcare services (diagnosis, medication, treatments) tailored according to individual differences and characteristics. This is a broad concept and can also extend beyond its general definition. It includes creating unique targeted medical products to diagnose/treat patient specific ailments and leveraging AI to suggest patient specific care plan/path. Ex: In the covid scenario, there was a scarcity of ICUs for the covid patients. Knowing which patients require an ICU is important and could be based on some underlying vitals/parameters.

A variety of factors affect patient outcome in a clinical setting that can range from better informed diagnostics, preventing equipment mishandling, optimal treatment planning, care cost optimization, improved transparency in clinical procedures, post discharge care, patient community for sharing resources etc.

Clinical points of care (POC) are the points in time when clinicians deliver healthcare products and services to patients at the time of care. Historically, this has been done in hospitals but with the onset of the pandemic the number of patients seeking virtual medical assistance has increased 32 folds. This resulted in a sudden shift in gears, where a need for decentralized, rapid, sensitive, and low-cost diagnostics has gained importance. The areas such as telehealth, digital therapeutics and care navigation has gained a lot of traction in the care giving space. Ex: Live two-way interaction between patients and providers (telehealth), treatment optimization (digital therapeutics).

Starting from registration of an individual in a hospital, followed by multiple layers of processes including appointments, diagnosis, reporting, treatment till the patient is discharged there exists a lot of scope of workflow optimization and streamlining at each level. Solutions in this area assist the overall healthcare ecosystem in a great way and address some of the critical yet not so highly prioritized problems which increase the efficiency of hospital, helping in faster screening of patients, decreased patient wait time, effective and on-time reporting and the list goes on..

Health privacy is the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of patient records. It involves both the conversational discretion of health care providers and the security of medical records. Modern concerns include the degree of disclosure to insurance companies, employers, and other third parties. The advent of electronic medical records (EMR) and patient care management systems (PCMS) have raised new concerns about privacy, balanced with efforts to reduce duplication of services and medical errors. Ex: Providing access to an individual’s health records to multiple stakeholders without a compromising privacy and security.