According to researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and the Commonwealth Fund, the use of medical services by patients will change drastically as the use of electronic health records and healthcare applications spreads.
“The results of our study are important because they provide a vision of how information technologies will have a profound impact over the next decade or two”, said one of the leading authors of the report, Jonathan Weiner, a professor of Health Policy and Administration at the Bloomberg School and the Director of the Center for Population Health Information Technology (CPHIT).
The increasing use of technology by doctors can be seen by the fact that over 70 per cent of professionals use electronic health records – ten years ago that figure was 10 per cent.
Consumers are also making more and more use of the internet and mobile telephones to manage their healthcare. It is thus probable that in the future the majority of patient interactions with the healthcare system will be digital.
The researchers estimate that when electronic health records and other e-health systems are fully applied in just 30 per cent of community health centers, American doctors will be able to treat between 4 and 9 per cent more patients than they do today due to an increase in efficiency.
Furthermore, with technology systems applied to healthcare, doctors will be able to delegate care to nursing professionals and medical assistants, reducing future demand for doctors by an additional amount of between 4 and 7 per cent.
As a result of the ability to pass care on to general practitioners – thanks to “e-redirection” systems – demand for specialists will be reduced by between 2 and 5 per cent.
In addition, telemedicine and digital communication systems used by doctors and patients could also help to resolve the scarcity of regional professionals, ensuring that 12 per cent of care is provided remotely.
Source: Europa Press
