Integrating advanced technologies into existing healthcare systems and workflows

We are on the verge of a revolution of advanced technologies in healthcare. The potential for positive impact is vast and the barriers to entry are lower than at any time in the past. Today anyone can build software that can help diagnose or treat a patient. Technology detaches the very immediate elements of healthcare delivery: the physician who examines a patient face-to-face, obtains their history in an intimate questioning process, and devises a plan almost as though a partnership is made with the patient, can be augmented with a tool that analyzes hundreds of potential pathogenic causes of a cough or features of a chest radiograph. Such tools have the potential to reshape healthcare delivery; making it available where traditional access to medical expertise cannot. This ability to augment and enhance healthcare practice using advanced technologies is gradually migrating from academic medical centers to outpatient clinics, emergency departments, hospitals and even the home. It requires licensing of new products or modification of existing tools, which have until now relied solely on long-established ratio and clinical practice, with the ability to learn from actual practice and continuously improve as methods have begun to offer. This represents a further challenge to practitioners who need to both understand the technology tools available to them, and embrace advanced technologies enhancing rather than replacing their work.