The Covid-19 lockdown measures have forced many people to look beyond the standard opportunities for accessing medical services. At the same time, healthcare professionals have had to enable innovative solutions. Cloud storage for documents in the medical field has proven to be a life-saving opportunity at a time when the entire world is getting used to new dynamics.
Remote assistance and medical service provision are both becoming more widely utilized, allowing patients to stay in touch with their doctors. Innovative document management solutions have played an important role in making that switch possible.
Cloud Storage for Documents in the Medical Field: A Growing Market
Research suggests that the medical record management market will continue growing steadily in the years to come.
The latest numbers reveal a market value of 774.5 million dollars by 2026. That represents a CAGR of 10.4 percent over the forecast period.
Such systems reduce significantly or eliminate the need for the maintenance of paper-based records. Not only are such records expensive to maintain, they also make it quite difficult for healthcare professionals to consult patients on the go.
Covid-19 just showed us how important such remote assistance is going to be in the years to come. And needless to say, online document storage is one of the prerequisites for giving patients access to such solutions.
The Rise of Telemedicine
Cloud storage for documents provides the foundation but a lot more will have to happen for telemedicine to solidify its positions. Covid-19 gave the sector a much-needed push, showing both patients and healthcare professionals that this service provision method can actually work.
Telemedicine is still the exception rather than the rule.
In the US, over 80 percent of consumers had never used telehealth solutions in the past.
The lack of proper infrastructure to support the provision of such solutions has been established as one of the primary factors for the trend. Cultural aspects and the very traditional nature of the interaction between doctor and patient will also have to be accounted for.
Many people still question the reliability and the effectiveness of such solutions. When prophylactic care was discontinued in many parts of the world due to lockdowns and quarantine, the skeptics discovered telemedicine to be capable of offering a viable enough solution.
Even the World Health Organization (WHO) has featured telemedicine as a recommendation for prophylactic service provision in the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic. It gives patients access to medical assistance without jeopardizing the health and wellbeing of healthcare service providers.
Should Your Practice Adopt Cloud Storage for Documents and Telemedicine
Adding remote consultations to the range of services you offer is not so difficult. The technologies required to make that expansion possible are more readily available and affordable than ever before. Not only that, they’re scalable to address the needs of different healthcare service providers – from private practices to large hospitals.
The entire process starts with medical record scanning and once this digitization is completed, the right cloud-based management solution can be implemented. Such a database can be accessed from any location that has internet access, allowing practitioners to always be in touch with patients and offer reliable help.
Giving telemedicine a try is worth it for several key reasons that go beyond the affordability of such expansion.
A recent Cisco survey suggests that 74 percent of patients would prefer convenience over the person-to-person contact with their healthcare service provider.
Telemedicine can also be used to reduce the burden on the facility, handling a significant portion of the cases remotely.
Telemedicine addresses the changing needs of patients, it offers a lot of flexibility and at the same time, it can increase productivity and reduce the risk of error (especially in the realm of complex case management).
Forecasts suggest that the telemedicine market will grow at a CAGR of 15.1 percent from 2019 to 2027. Based on these statistics, 96 percent of the US medical facilities plan to enter the realm of virtual medicine in the coming months.
Making Your First Steps
Setting up a cloud-based document management system that makes patient information readily available is the first steps towards implementing a virtual medical service transformation.
A couple of other essentials for the initiation of a telemedicine program include determining the scope of solutions and the percentage of staff involved in their provision, backing it up with the right hardware to support the software, integrating an online payment system in your practice and finding out which communication channels are bound to deliver an optimal outcome (video conference calls with patients, instant messaging, etc.).
Telemedicine could be used to address a wide array of patient needs – diagnosis, routine check-ups, the management of chronic conditions, coaching, lifestyle management, medication management and mental health counselling are just a few examples.
How you leverage brand new technologies and determine the scope of assistance depends entirely on the specifics of your practice, the interactions you already have with patients and your growth ambitions for the months and even years to come.