Medication non-adherence causes 125,000 unnecessary deaths and over $100 billion in medical costs annually. Prescribing medication is a big concern for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension. Despite this, up to 60 percent of these people do not adhere to correct medication management.
Another study found that nearly 90 percent of those receiving long-term care took five or more medicines daily. The bulk of these individuals are older and sensitive to medication errors.
Thankfully, Intelligent Automation (IA) can save millions of lives and increase healthy life expectancy since it can help save lives in medical diagnosis and research. It also supports global healthcare equity and can also be utilized to supplement human drivers, lowering road fatalities and injuries.
Given this information, it’s no surprise that drug tracking solutions are in high demand. After all, 75 percent of mHealth app users find medication reminders beneficial. Most of them demand standalone programs with more advanced features.
Here are some pitfalls that correct medication management via IA systems can prevent:
1. Preventing Medical Error-related Deaths
Medical errors are a serious and often overlooked component of modern healthcare. Aside from heart disease and cancer, they kill more people in the US each year at around 250,000 casualties.
For instance, two-year-old Emily Jerry died in 2006 after receiving 20 times the recommended concentration of intravenous (IV) saline solution from a pharmacy worker. In his letter, Emily’s father said, “medical-care workers are dedicated, caring people, but they are human. And human beings make mistakes.”
Together with human specialists, IA can double-check drugs and identify discrepancies between doctors’ orders and medical standards of care, among other things. It is never tired or distracted, which typically occurs now in then with healthcare workers. While it may be a small margin or error, it can be fatal in prescribing healthcare treatments.
IA can also track patient health in real-time. It may alert a nurse or doctor to an emergency based on a patient’s blood pressure or heart rate. It can even predict heart attacks, strokes, and infections, potentially saving lives and freeing up time for doctors and nurses.
2. Diagnosis And Research Can Prevent Death
Chronic non-communicable diseases include cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory problems, cause many deaths globally.
The earlier these diseases are diagnosed, the better the prospects of recovery. Machine learning (ML) can analyze scans and other medical data such as blood pressure to make quick and accurate diagnoses. It’s hardly unexpected that ML can read lung or breast images faster than humans, but it also surpasses clinicians at cancer identification.
These disorders also share the prospect of finding cures through research. This frees up human researchers for higher-level cognitive work and makes the study process faster and more efficient.
3. Reduced Preventable Deaths in Developing Countries
Affluent countries can easily prevent diseases that kill many people in the impoverished world due to wealth and resource inequities. This is related to healthcare access issues, which WHO estimates a 4.3 million-person global shortage.
IA technology provides healthcare to anyone with a smartphone, an increasing demographic in countries lacking in infrastructure and technology. Skin disorders, burns, and chronic wounds can be diagnosed using digital snapshots and applications that connect patients to clinicians remotely.
Vaccines and blood donations are examples of tangible supplies that cannot be delivered digitally. Some companies also use intelligent drones to transport supplies to areas lacking road infrastructure.
Conclusion
Patients’ health can be monitored using cameras and sensors in hospital rooms. Machine learning, staffing level prediction, real-time adjustment processes, and automated invoicing can support medical diagnosis and drug discovery. Start with these small, everyday tasks and expand from there to adopt IA in ways that make your routines and procedures more manageable.
Experts say that IA technology could reduce premature deaths by 10 to 30 percent. That’s millions of lives potentially saved each year with efficient use of IA solutions.
At MedManage, we are a cloud-based medication log app and management system for patients and caregivers. It enables everyday tasks such as managing various prescriptions and keeping a daily medication diary to be accomplished digitally and in real-time. Download our MedManage Medication Reminder on Apple Store and Playstore now!