As healthcare organizations, including senior care providers, must weigh an increasing number of tech innovations to adopt, one new high-level survey aims to “sift through the noise” by capturing what tools may be most beneficial.
Although cybersecurity and telemedicine currently are the most widely adopted tech tools among those pooled, adding more remote monitoring appeared to be the highest future priority for healthcare companies, according to a newly released report from digital marketplace Panda Health.
Eighty-six percent of the survey participants said they believed remote monitoring would have the biggest future benefit, whereas virtual nursing was considered the least valuable of the slate of technologies reviewed in the survey.
Not all technologies adopted in healthcare have been immediately beneficial or accomplished their stated goals. Many experts believe initial electronic health records systems were not designed to be user friendly, and thus created new problems and training needs.
Healthcare leaders identified three broad goals for tech that they require in new tools: They must improve workflow, the must improve resident/patient outcomes and they must reduce costs.
The need to frame tech solutions in terms of return on investment and perceived value also is due to financial pressures organizations face, the Panda survey noted. Within senior care, that issue is most acutely felt in staffing concerns.
“The current state of the healthcare industry has raised the stakes on hospital and health system leaders to ensure they are investing their limited resources in the most effective way possible,” Ryan Bengston, president and chief operating officer of Panda Health, said in a statement.
In addition to low enthusiasm for virtual nursing, the survey participants also rated chatbots or digital care navigators as having lower perceived value.
Based on those findings, it seems many healthcare leaders are on the same page with caregivers and residents/patients in terms of being wary of any tools that replace or diminish human, interpersonal interactions.
