Health From Home: How Remote Solutions Are Accelerating Progress for Distributed Patient Care

As the country races to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, the healthcare industry’s once-gradual adoption of connected technology solutions is now an urgent requirement. And with the promise of the 5G era’s enhanced data speed and low-latency connections, the prospect of improved telehealth services in the future offers the potential for providers to respond faster and more effectively while minimizing the need for face-to-face services. This could ultimately speed up industry transformation, improving patient care and outcomes today and in the long run. 

According to the World Health Organization, using connected technology to improve healthcare (or “eHealth”) includes delivering health information using the internet and telecommunications, leveraging digital innovations to improve health systems management processes, public health services, the training of healthcare professionals and more. An underlying idea is that the focal point of healthcare can then shift from the hospital to more distributed service, centered primarily on patients and their needs.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re observing how this digitalization and virtualization of care is an essential tool for so many reasons: responding to emergencies faster, freeing up time for professionals, minimizing infection risks and maintaining safety for practitioners and first responders, patients and their families and entire communities.

The accelerated solutions unfolding now may also point to more permanent progress in healthcare. With the power of emerging 5G networks, connected devices and artificial intelligence (AI), we’re also looking at cutting-edge opportunities to use mobile apps and telehealth, remote monitoring programs, advanced data analytics and more to save lives, improve care and reach groundbreaking medical discoveries.