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How hospitals are integrating Augmented Reality and other tech to improve patient experience

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How hospitals are integrating Augmented Reality and other tech to improve patient experience

August 9, 2018

By Rick Halton, VP Product & Marketing, Lumeon • Article originally published at MedCityNews.com New, emerging technologies are turning patients into savvy healthcare consumers with higher expectations around the services they receive. From wearables to telemedicine, virtual and augmented reality, 3D imaging, and artificial intelligence, patients are increasingly drawn to cutting-edge experiences, similar to what […]

How To Optimize Perioperative Patient Engagement; the ERAS® way

August 7, 2018

By Dan Horne, Business Analysis and Transformation Director, Lumeon Trust and open communication are integral pieces of the doctor-patient relationship, paramount to a successful surgical outcome and a positive patient experience. However, meeting patient information needs and engaging them from diagnosis to recovery has been an ongoing challenge. This challenge has been emphasized during the […]

The Business Case for Connecting the Patient Journey

April 19, 2018

By Rick Halton, VP Product & Marketing, Lumeon The Business Case for Connecting the Patient Journey Over half a century has passed since former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, authorizing the construction of a vast network of more than 40,000 interstate highways across the nation. The Interstate Highway System as […]

Consumerizing the Healthcare Experience with Real-Time Health Systems

April 11, 2018

  By Robbie Hughes, Founder and CEO, Lumeon For all of the criticism that the airline industry receives, there is one thing it has mastered: creating a seamless, digitally integrated experience for the customer journey, with automated coordination across all stakeholders and touchpoints. This helps grow the airline’s revenue (‘welcome back Mr. Hughes’), whilst improving […]

The Personal Path to Wellness: Why choice architecture is essential to good wellness programs

November 30, 2017

Imagine you're the administrator of a wellness program at a big hospital, like I am, and an employee comes to you requesting resources to help reduce his foreign accent. This employee is overweight and has high blood pressure, but his priority is clearing the roadblocks in his career created by the way he talks.

Winning tactics for ASCs in 2018

November 2, 2017

Against a backdrop of rising deductibles and tightening household budgets the ASC market is booming, with payers triggering a wave of contracting initiatives moving reimbursement out of hospitals and into the more cost-effective ASC environment. New regulations, payment models and technology mean 2018 could be a year of unprecedented change. How could all of this impact your operational strategy in 2018?

The AI lifestyle coach. A new dawn for personalizing corporate wellness?

October 26, 2017

In recent years, corporate wellness programs have undergone something of an evolutionary leap. The traditional approach to wellness was rather like an ineffective annual appraisal; an hour or two of diagnostic analysis of how you were performing, with some recommended actions that may or may not be followed up on, or escalation if very bad scores are achieved.

Reinventing the healthcare wheel: innovation waste and scaling best practice

October 17, 2017

The benefits of implementing standardized best practice to reduce unwarranted variation are well known and accepted. Despite the occasional tension between independently-minded physicians and business-minded healthcare executives, it is becoming increasingly clear that to deliver care in a world of increasing life spans and chronic disease, the system must change.

Top 7 Employer Health & Wellness Trends for 2018

October 6, 2017

Words by Imogen Barber Earlier this week, the Lumeon team headed out to attend the 9th Employer Healthcare and Benefits Congress in LA.  The event brought together over 2,000 leading payers, TPAs, brokers, consultants, healthcare providers, benefits companies, and of course, employers to discuss the latest developments in the employer benefits industry. They were joined by 200 exhibitors, offering everything from smart water bottles to precision genomics – all under the […]

Payer-provider dynamics in a value-based world

October 4, 2017

In part 2, we investigate the somewhat fractious relationship between payers and providers, and how organizations are adapting to work together in a value-based system.

By Rick Halton, VP Product & Marketing, Lumeon • Article originally published at MedCityNews.com

New, emerging technologies are turning patients into savvy healthcare consumers with higher expectations around the services they receive. From wearables to telemedicine, virtual and augmented reality, 3D imaging, and artificial intelligence, patients are increasingly drawn to cutting-edge experiences, similar to what they experience in their everyday lives as consumers.

Healthcare organizations are taking notice. More and more, they are beginning to understand that one of the best ways of getting new patients and managing current patients is to offer and incorporate innovative and emerging technology within their practice – what would be seen in most business practices as adding value.

Augmented and virtual reality 

One organization pushing the boundaries of emerging technology in healthcare is the Cleveland Clinic, which is working on a project that aims to revolutionize anatomical education through augmented and virtual reality (AR / VR). Andrew Moan, General Manager for Virtual and Augmented Reality Medical Devices at the Cleveland Clinic, explained the project’s significance.

“The challenge with traditional cadaver-based learning is that cadavers may not be representative of a particular patient case. Some countries don’t even authorize the use of cadavers, so it’s not an efficient way to learn,” he said.

“Now, imagine if you could have a 3D representation of a heart, for instance, not only to look at, but also to interact with. We’re taking the standard medical syllabus and converting it into a reference library for creating 3D assets, so that students can experience an environment that they can swipe around and explore on a range of devices, whether it’s mobile, PC or VR.”

Not only can this provide a standardized way for medical professionals to understand the human body, it also has the potential to transform patient education with the ability to show patients their condition and exactly what is going on inside their bodies.

Moan highlighted the value of machine learning in creating these experiences, through its ability to automate the identification of features like bones and veins in a CT scan, in order to create a 3D model. He believes that eventually, we will reach a point where artificial intelligence can be applied to make decisions based on these models – potentially in the future, automating diagnoses. In addition to education, the Cleveland Clinic is also looking at the patient experience as another area that can be transformed through VR. He pointed to pediatrics in particular, where VR could be used as a tool to transport children away from frightening medical environments.

Thinking ahead of the technology curve

As technologies continue to advance, healthcare organizations will need to be aware of new innovations, and new ways to use and integrate them. One of the ways that organizations such as Vanderbilt University Medical Center are doing this is by creating patient technology advisory boards.

Ryzell McKinney, Director of Access Technology for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said it’s all about patient preference. “We ask the members of our patient technology advisory board what type of technology they would like to see implemented into their care, and it’s opened up all kinds of considerations for new implementations.”

He noted that telehealth is an area that the medical center is working toward. “For patients that don’t want to drive long distances to our facilities, we want to be able to meet them wherever they are,” McKinney said. “We’re also doing some research in artificial intelligence as a result. We’re not sure where we’ll land yet in terms of implementation, but there will likely be something there.”

Integration challenges

In addition to evaluating future opportunities and applications for emerging technology, it’s just as important to consider new sets of challenges that these technologies will introduce.

According to Ed Martin, Technology Director with the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Digital Health Innovation, data interoperability, data liquidity and privacy controls are a few major concerns that healthcare providers must focus on addressing.

“Unlike a consumer service like Amazon, which knows its users’ purchase history and general interests, the free flow of health data is not so easy to acquire,” Martin said. “Because people get their healthcare from so many different places, it’s created a data interoperability problem that this industry needs to solve.”

He added that it’s also critical to consider privacy issues. “Whatever solutions we roll out, we need to make sure that we are able to maintain strict privacy controls. Unlocking the future of healthcare innovation will require a foundation of data interoperability and data liquidity, but in setting that data free, we need to strike a balance with proper data control.”

At the rate that technology is emerging, evolving and driving new expectations within our everyday lives, its opportunities for the healthcare industry are just as powerful. Providers must start planning ahead for them, today. Healthcare has fallen behind other industries when it comes to delivering services in ways consumers expect: proactively, seamlessly and using unique personalized methods. The good news is that it is on its way to catching up.