Virtual Hospitals: Future of Healthcare

The healthcare sector has seen drastic and dramatic changes as technology has slowly made its presence felt in its many branches. Healthcare professionals and institutions are now relying on technology for a number of tasks like keeping records, maintaining documents, treating patients remotely, optimizing patient out-times, making diagnoses more accurate, etc. Telehealth and telemedicine are well-known terms in healthcare and now, a new concept has emerged to facilitate them. It’s called a virtual hospital.
Virtual hospitals are those where doctors and nurses can provide remote care to patients based in another location through a number of smart monitors and AI devices. These devices allow healthcare providers to see their patients as well as patient data and offer diagnosis and treatment options. One prime example of a virtual hospital is the Mercy Virtual Care Center based in St. Louis. This hospital aims to reduce the time spent between a patient meeting the healthcare provider, which can be crucial to the patient’s health. Similarly, it also aims to keep very sick patients from coming in to the hospital frequently and in the comfort of their homes being monitored on a regular basis. So what are the advantages of offering such virtual care?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular technology in healthcare and has transformed the way physicians and doctors treat patients by making processes more efficient. Virtual hospitals can use IoT to monitor patients using a variety of devices and technology such as sensors, wearables, fall detection devices, and radio frequency identification. These devices help healthcare providers track vital signs of critical patients, identify security breaches, falls or stumbles and predict when a patient might need medicines or medical care.

Patients and healthcare providers can communicate with each other almost instantly and it saves the time spent in getting an appointment and waiting to meet a physician.

Virtual hospitals are convenient and time-saving as doctors can treat patients immediately and it also saves a lot of commuting time. It is also convenient because critical patients or emergency cases can receive immediate care and save on valuable time.

Virtual care can be empowering for smaller institutions or those that are based in far out, remote locations. Healthcare institutions that are difficult to reach on time or those who do not have full-time specialists can use this type of healthcare to cater to critical or emergency cases. Doctors can guide the staff in medical procedures to ensure that crucial time is not wasted.

The overall speed, quality and efficiency of treatment means that virtual care offers increased patient satisfaction. Patients do not need to wait at a hospital to see their physician. They can be treated in a shorter period of time from the comfort of their homes. Doctors also spend less time commuting and can focus on more patients and better services. Overall, virtual care increases the efficiency of the entire process.