Intelligent Health.tech Issue 15 | Page 19

H E A L T H I N S I G H T S the workforce or seek roles that provide more flexibility . Higher operational costs coupled with labour shortages feel like a recipe for disaster . Undoubtedly , the healthcare industry will need to be more innovative to improve operational efficiency , capacity and labour management associated with the higher costs / less available / labour challenge .
The demand for more flexible healthcare roles is also adding a new twist to the labour challenge . According to McKinsey , 45 % of healthcare practitioners say they do some remote work , perhaps reflecting the rise in telemedicine . As telehealth and home healthcare expand , expect more clinicians to seek more roles that provide more flexibility .
Healthcare will require more end-to-end visibility in the supply chain , together with other applications driving environmental sensing growth . Expect providers to adopt real-time health system supply chain platforms , driven by the need to more closely align supply chain logistics with clinical activity .
It ’ s estimated that up to 13 million nurses will be needed to fill the global nurse shortage gap in the future . Staffing shortages are driving the need for AI to accelerate innovation , particularly for patient diagnosis , treatment and home healthcare . In the same study , nurses expressed that documentation , or ‘ hunting and gathering ’ takes up about 15 % of their time during a shift . Tech and digital solutions can help reduce this burden on nurses ’ time .
5 . Non-acute ( home healthcare and ambulatory ) care providers will become fast technology adopters clinical and non-clinical staff . Expect to see increased digitalisation of information systems and widespread deployments of clinical smartphones and healthcare-grade tablets that can expedite positive patient ID , checkins , reporting , charge capture and more .
6 . Technology will be levered more to reduce preventable errors
Hospitals can be dangerous places with at least one in 20 patients affected by preventable patient harm , with 12 % of this group suffering from permanent disability or dying because of it . Obviously , safety is the top priority for hospitals / healthcare and one patient harmed by medical error is one too many .
Nine in 10 hospital decision-makers say they will increase spending on clinical mobility , with the push for clearer communications and greater workforce productivity core to this strategy change according to Zebra ’ s Healthcare Vision Study . They will be investing more heavily in care-team communication point of care mobile device utilisation , barcode utilisation and compliance rates and cleaning and disinfectant utilisation and compliance . Additionally , mobile alerting systems will make it easier to deploy , manage and use with enterprise-grade clinical smartphones that have security and privacycentric feature sets along with remote management capabilities . �
Wayne Miller , Director , EMEA Healthcare Practice , Zebra Technologies
The growth of patient care and jobs outside the hospital is one of the fastest-growing and highest-margin segments in the healthcare industry . The non-acute sector must make up for months of paused procedures during the pandemic . The faster they can turn patients and procedure rooms , the more revenue they can generate . However , such turns require precision and extensive coordination between
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