Healthcare automation must happen now or we risk falling further behind

Finance. Insurance. Real estate. Manufacturing. All leading industries in the USA accounting for large portions of GDP. All employing automation throughout their workflows and benefiting dramatically from an upturn in productivity. But what about healthcare automation?

Healthcare is only just beginning to catch on. While it’s very much a leading industry (health and social care together account for the 4th biggest national industry) it’s not at the vanguard of technological advancement like the others. It’s the last industry to embrace and benefit from automation — which means there are plenty of opportunities. Frictional costs remain in healthcare which we need to eliminate. The current situation is ridiculous.

Why healthcare automation must happen

Huge amounts of money are spent on healthcare but it’s pointless to continue spending more and more on an old and unsuitable system — something must change.

The strain on the healthcare system is getting greater, with the population increasing and aging. Primary care providers are overwhelmed. And on top of that, with a shift from a fee-for-service model, patients are expecting more. We can’t just work harder, we need to work smarter.

The solution is to make healthcare more efficient. And we need to provide the tools to enable it.

Inefficiency in healthcare

By embracing technology and automating workflows, industries such as finance and real estate have begun to eradicate superfluous expenditure. Financial technology, or FinTech, has become a leading industry unto itself, encouraging talented developers and designers with unique challenges and high salaries. It appreciates the impact technology can have on the industry as a whole and is doing what is required to improve, from top to bottom. Now we need healthcare automation, in order to modernize and thrive.

Healthcare in the next decade must be more innovative or it will fall behind as an industry and won’t meet patient expectations.

There’s a huge opportunity for developers to introduce new tools and solutions that will improve life for healthcare practitioners. And it’s the practitioner that must benefit from new tools. Digital tools will often be bought by the CIO — solve the problems of practitioners and they’ll buy from you. It’s win-win.

Sure, money isn’t quite as plentiful as in finance but people work long, stressful hours in healthcare and will spend to improve their situations. It’s just a case of understanding their difficulties and filling in the gaps.

Things are clearly improving on this front, with more tech entering the healthcare IT market than ever before. However, it’s important to capitalize on this trend and innovate new tech to take healthcare information technology to the next level.

Find your place

At Relaymed, we are providing our own piece of the puzzle through our automated point-of-care (POC) testing innovation. We came across this gap in the market by visiting physician practices, where we witnessed, firsthand, the astonishing problems and inefficiencies associated with POC testing. Seeing the struggle physician practices have with paper printouts was crazy!

It then took hard work and plenty of refinement but, by working alongside healthcare professionals, we now have a POC connectivity solution that massively improves efficiency and creates an instant ROI. See for yourself.

Go see!

There is a great need for change but Relaymed only addresses a small part of the problem. Yet, we have a passion to see healthcare improve, from top to bottom, and encourage you to find your place. So go see for yourself! How do they work? What do they need? There’s a lot of work to be done in primary care and outpatient settings. If you’re a talented developer or entrepreneur, you might just find the space for your greatest innovation. Support our mission to deliver healthcare automation and let doctors be doctors.

Don’t miss out

As we said, more and more developers are entering the healthcare space and improving the various facets that have fallen behind. Now that we’ve found our place, we strongly encourage others to find yours.

If you can solve inefficiencies in primary care, and show a strong ROI, then you will have a market. The healthcare IT boom is here, so what are you waiting for?