Online Health Care – Challenges Faced and How We Can Make a Win-win Situation

India’s noticeable benefit is the huge pool of online medical specialists and experts working round-the-clock and the comparatively lower medical costs as equaled to other western and Asian countries. The way internet penetration and alertness about health care is growing in India, e-health care services would mature at a very healthy rate.

Digital Healthcare

The fact that we barged into the digital healthcare space is enough evidence that healthcare will leave no stones unturned to join forces with the World Wide Web, exploring enhanced ways to attach with probable patients. E-health in current times has witnessed a volatile market evolution and shows no sign of slowing down.

The Indian healthcare division alone is projected to touch $160 billion in the year 2017, which is crudely double from what it was in 2012, leading to a progress rate of about 15 per cent.

Factors That Made Movement Possible

This movement is made possible due to a group of factors like easy access to good healthcare facilities, comparative upsurge in incomes and extra importance on awareness of health and other such factors contribute to this advance. Not just this, there is a noteworthy demand in the quality of healthcare services in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, indicating the fact that people are identifying the necessity for specialty-care.

The healthcare industry recently has become highly controlled. The range and intricacy of healthcare regulation has made it extremely tough for organizations to embrace novel know-hows. As a result paralleled to other industries, the healthcare segment has been fairly slow to accept technological revolutions. When thinking about technology in the healthcare segment, and more precisely embedded communications, there is a gamut of vital factors to be considered. Despite its massive growth potential, the healthcare industry faces challenging situations that hamper invention.

 So Where Does the Real Challenge Lie?

Online medical professionals interact with the masses through a gamut of hashtags, likes and shares. However, this technologically savvy trend can also result in misunderstanding. Patients might take to self-diagnosing and treating themselves. Although social media has its own doles, it’s vital for patients to get themselves checked by a doctor in case of any emergency medical issue. The only solution to this situation is that online healthcare portals should make it accessible for people to browse online through quality doctors, read through feedback provided by patients and must be able to book their next appointment with just the click of a button.

• Secondly, India comprises a major portion of people who are introduced to doctors by family and friends or by word-of-mouth. Getting these people to trust that their medical issues can be solved through the podium of internet is a real challenge. Instilling trust factor among these people can definitely bring in great victory for healthcare portals.
• Another challenging situation would be online healthcare is not at all accessible to the community of people who are not technologically savvy. The rural classes are not at all familiar with receiving online medical care. Language barrier is also another impediment that creates a challenge for many. There is a need to create a more affordable and accessible platform to cater to all the strata of the society

.  Security is a major concern while dealing with online health applications since it involves confidential and sensitive health data of the patients. The healthcare industry has very rigid requirements around cryptographic security that commands how and when the data should be translated, conveyed and decrypted.

• Many healthcare professionals are still very unwilling to modify their current approaches and systems that they’re familiar to. The worth of current technologies needs to be rapidly accepted and proven to surge competency and customer satisfaction.
• For the healthcare portal to emerge victorious being high in performance and offering high quality service round the clock becomes mandatory. For example, a chronically ill patient must receive the required online help at given time of the hour.

While there’s no looking down for the healthcare industry, online healthcare is undoubtedly emerging as the real hero. Studies have revealed that there will be about 550 million users of internet by the year 2018. Online healthcare has improved communication amongst various people by not only making doctors and hospitals more reachable to patients, but is also aiding patients bond with other patients. These podiums are not just informing people but are also encouraging and inspiring them.

This article was originally published on entrepreneur and has been republished with the author’s permission.