By Smridhi Uppal

In an interview with Ethealthworld, James Woo, APAC Healthcare Practice Lead, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific shared his insights on how the impact of Covid- 19 will accelerate the healthcare industry’s embrace of technological implementation to not only cope with this current pandemic but help to bring a game-changing attitude to future healthcare delivery.

What are the new trends that will emerge in the healthcare technology post Covid-19? How can the healthcare system be prepared for such an emergency in the future?

The impact of Covid-19 has come as a wake-up call for pharmaceutical and healthcare leaders to embrace new and innovative technologies, not only to operate in the post-Covid era but also to be future-ready to deal with a similar unforeseen crisis in the future.

From using data to better understand patient preferences and delivering a personalized experience based on that data to securely delivering medical information, mastering digital technologies can help organizations shape the next generation of healthcare.

While we cannot predict the future, we can learn from experience and better adapt to mitigate future challenges and improve care capabilities (without comprising safety or privacy standards) if we have the right systems in place.

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced many hospitals, clinics, and labs to implement new triage, testing, and treatment processes, many of which have required the fast implementation of novel mobile computing, scanning, and printing applications.

Healthcare systems need time to upgrade and improve, hence a need to start investing in healthcare-grade technology solutions allows them to digitize workflows, adapt processes, implement new policies, increase data accessibility and quickly scale operations up or down as needed.

How can healthcare practitioners ensure remote patient monitoring, especially in India?

A disjointed or incompatible system can lead to unnecessary, even dangerous, delays, and errors in the medical, caregiving, and administrative activities. Through remote patient monitoring, patients and assets are granted with a digital footprint.

This allows clinicians and medical practitioners to harness technological solutions to view their resources and assess their options in real-time, leading to better-informed decisions and improved patient outcomes.

This can be done by leveraging on the potential of Cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) and combining technologies such as barcoding, RFID, and mobile computing.

Through this, clinicians and medical practitioners will be able to track the whereabouts of their patients from the time they are admitted till when they are discharged.

It also enables them to capture, analyze, track, share, and act on real-time data from anywhere and at any time, thereby saving time and enhancing efficiency. This, in turn, helps to safeguard patient, staff, and asset safety in all areas of their facility.

What are the challenges and opportunities in the Indian healthcare system from Zebra’s perspective?

According to Zebra Technologies’ 2022 Hospital Vision Study, which combines three global research surveys, focusing on nursing managers, patients, and IT decision-makers, 77% of recently hospitalized patients said they felt positive about clinicians using mobile devices in their care.

In India, patients and healthcare expert providers are increasingly becoming savvier to adopt mobile technologies when delivering patient care.

According to data captured from Google Trends, India ranks among the top five countries for search terms like ‘mobile health’ and ‘mHealth’, confirming that the Indian population is also fascinated by mHealth. This represents a game-changing attitude to future healthcare delivery.

How is Zebra Technologies supporting customers in India to fight against Covid-19?

Given the rapidly evolving situation with Covid-19, Zebra introduced step-by-step guidelines on how to specifically disinfect each model. It also confirmed which cleaning agents are safe to use, including the purity or formulation levels for each ingredient, as well as the cleaning agents that should never be used.

Cleaning devices that are going to be used by multiple workers across shifts is a key requirement that we consider not only when designing our products, but also in providing our customers and partners clear guidance on how they can most effectively clean and disinfect them once they are installed in the field.

Further, Zebra has also launched the Covid-19 Heroes microsite to recognize the efforts of front-line workers and rolled out the competition for nurses and nursing students.

The latter encourages the nurses and nursing students to submit their ideas on how technology can help solve some of today’s biggest healthcare challenges, with the chance of winning scholarships.

What are your short term and long-term goals where India is concerned?

Before Covid-19, hospitals and clinics around the world are already turning to technology and automation to reduce the strain on an already fragile healthcare system.

Through the adoption of clinical mobility, hospitals around the world will be able to eliminate manual, error-prone procedures and replace them with digital solutions that increase the accuracy of patient identification, streamline processes, improve the quality of patient care and enhance overall visibility.

By digitally capturing information, data can be transmitted in real-time to clinical staff, thereby reducing – even eliminating – errors and delivering critical time savings as a result. By adopting purpose-built healthcare technology, enables clinicians to provide a higher level of patient care by connecting them to the patient data, in real-time.

Currently, public and private hospitals in India are already using Zebra solutions. Moving forward, Zebra India wishes to extend our healthcare solutions to more hospitals and clinics to help to enhance their efficiency and minimize errors by putting the right technology in their hands.