The Covid-19 pandemic has generated an unprecedented push into the digital space, as quarantines and lockdowns have driven people worldwide to conduct much of their daily activities virtually. Education, banking, shopping, healthcare, and entertainment are among areas impacted by this new reality. The impact on the healthcare sector means technology is also dramatically changing the way in which medical services are delivered.
While some healthcare facilities scramble to offer telehealth solutions using existing IT systems and infrastructure, others are investing in technology, including advanced analytics applications that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Patients are demanding greater access to digital services, from virtual medical visits to faster access to diagnostic reports, using a variety of platforms and applications.
“AI can now reveal patterns across huge amounts of data that are too subtle or complex for people to detect,” says Carla Kriwet, CEO for Connected Care and Healthcare Informatics at Royal Philips, in a report published by the World Economic Forum last year. “It does so by aggregating information from multiple sources that in 2020 remained trapped in silos, including connected home devices, medical records and increasingly non-medical data.”
Kriwet argues the first major result of AI in healthcare is that health systems can now deliver healthcare that is both proactive and predictive. She predicts that by 2030, healthcare systems will be able to anticipate when someone is at risk of chronic disease and suggest preventive measures. New technologies will also allow hospitals to focus on treating acutely ill patients and performing complex medical procedures, leaving less urgent cases to a hub and bespoke network of retail clinics, same-day surgery centers, specialist treatment clinics and patients’ homes, all connected to a single digital infrastructure.
Much of this technology is already in place, using AI to analyze diagnostic medical images, optimize patient flows in hospital emergency rooms, and identify at-risk groups to provide preemptive care that reduces the need for hospitalization. All of this generates increased data demands that require higher density processing capacity and boosts the need for lower latency, in particular with the use of data-intensive applications for diagnostic tools such as MRIs and CT scans.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is another factor. “Covid-19 has accelerated a trend to IoT in both hospitals and remote settings,” says Brian O’Rourke, Senior Analyst - Internet of Things, at S&P Global Market Intelligence, in a research report on IoT in the healthcare sector published in 2021). “The healthcare system has moved to reduce capacity and exposure during the pandemic by increasing the use of telehealth to monitor patients remotely,” he adds, noting IoT has aided this transition. He says IoT is already present in a wide variety of devices throughout hospitals, is cost-effective, and also supports services outside hospitals, including providing electronic health records that patients can monitor remotely.
Vertiv, as enablers of business continuity and critical infrastructure solutions, is guiding customers through this important transition and working to keep their operations running securely and without interruption. This includes leveraging AI technology in our solutions and services for data center customers to monitor their operations across various locations, prevent potential service disruptions, resolve events quickly when they occur, and improve efficiency.
“Today, we have a healthcare system where IoT is contributing to gradual progress in some cases, and significant change in others,” says O’Rourke. “The ability to quickly and cheaply transmit large amounts of data is both needed and increasingly possible in a world with ubiquitous high data rate broadband, wireless technology and devices, whether in a big city hospital or a small apartment.”
