Hybrid healthcare is the new normal towards hybrid care

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a shift to a new technological strategy that many healthcare organizations are working to adopt. This did not affect humanity but the crisis offered to act as the catalyst for improving healthcare organizations and walk on a new transformation journey. Due to a lack of trust in digital technology various fears and challenges arose in the hybrid models especially on the telemedicine gamut. In order to facilitate the remote area care facilities, the government of India approved that many consumers and clinicians continue to safely get access and provide health care to masses, ensuring reduced costs and completely focused on improving their health conditions.

Infuse of telehealth and hybrid care model in treatments

The concept of a hybrid care model is the key aspect of the hybrid healthcare model and has become the "new normal" as this model brings out a shift from provider-centric to patient-centric or individual-centric care.

 In other words, hybrid healthcare is neither digital nor physical, neither in-office nor at home rather it is a co-existence of different states and capabilities.

Hybrid health care has been seen as the first-hand practical application of digital technology during the pandemic. It gives the best experience of everything,  fusing digital and physical experiences to provide a flexible, accessible, and seamless patient-centric continuum of care, unlike conventional telehealth and is based heavily on technology for video conferencing, patient monitoring, appointment scheduling, and follow-up. So Telehealth can help deal with problems like doctor shortages, extend healthcare into geographically isolated areas, and deliver compelling patient education. However, physicians unlikely may not be able to properly diagnose and treat medical conditions online and some patients may not be comfortable with online transactions or have any technical knowledge to participate.

Claus Jensen, chief digital officer, and CTO at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said healthcare CIOs should figure out ways to ensure those changes stick around, pushing the industry toward hybrid care. Jensen, who took on the leadership role in October 2019, describes hybrid care as digital and physical experiences fused to provide flexible, accessible patient-centric care. Health IT leaders will be tasked with stitching data and applications together to provide a seamless experience.

Hybrid Ecosystem created using mix of technologies

Today worldwide the healthcare sector is lagging in terms of automation and adverse programs are investigated by a team of people, so basically real-time data and machine learning can ease and support faster evidence-based investigations to make new learning medical systems. Thus both data and technology are highly effective in providing effective solutions to labor shortages paying attendance to skills required and tasks shifts of professionals in the medical. 

Technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analysis, blockchain, the Internet of Things, virtual care, remote monitoring, and smart wearables are most important in the new hybrid ecosystem. Wearable healthcare technology is becoming more and more widespread. Thus, Smaller, cheaper, and more accurate devices can be mixed with digital applications that provide real-time health understanding and long-term datasets.

The healthcare model provides efficient and effective services to people especially in India, which lacks healthcare accessibility, especially in the rural area. Nowadays as omicron spread may show the early signs of the third wave and convert this pandemic into an endemic, hence it becomes necessary to investigate the actual underlying pandemic of non-communicable diseases (NCSs) and needs to be addressed soon using a hybrid model. Also, to integrate digital skills into healthcare education, create affordable private health through digital innovation, maintain research momentum, regularly modify regulatory processes, develop sustainable infrastructure and systematically Implement changes and establish better connections between governments, government agencies, etc. are key steps required to transforming health care.

The pandemic has  lead to the maximum adoption and proliferation of digital health care solutions. This modernization has received to buy in the healthcare professionals and patients who have witnessed the practical first-hand use of digitalization during the pandemic. Therefore patients can actively bring improved changes in their lifestyle based on their health. Also, the tech-enabled diagnostics and tools used needs to ensure proper standardization. There is a greater number of shortages of radiologists but tech platforms will ensure effective utilization of artificial intelligence to deal with initial screenings of an MRI or CT. This will result in the clarity of distinctions between primary and secondary care with technology facilitating more care provisions in local ecosystems including pharmacies and community care. Thus all these ways will actively support digitization and bring more towards integrated care systems.

The hybrid healthcare system in the future will improve outcomes for patients and leverage time-poor healthcare professionals. As the healthcare industry faces tough challenges technological solutions will help leaders improve performance and increase collaborations to manage costs across systems. To improve patient care the hospitals and health systems embrace value-based reimbursement at hospitals thereby helping healthcare professionals to improve patient care and needs and create better experiences. One step that solves most of the problems in healthcare is the increase in government expenditure.

The government made announcements according to which many proposals were given  to increase the expenditure on healthcare to 2.5% of the GDP by 2025. A numerable schemes came up like Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission, Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A), Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK), The Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakaram, National AIDS Control Organisation and many more.

So, Hybrid has become part of the useful mixing of the virtual and the physical. Moreover, Patients find hybrid healthcare more convenient, proactive, and less time-consuming, while providers see the opportunity to provide more effective healthcare at low costs. Both patients and healthcare providers may struggle with the speed and complexity of healthcare’s digital transformation, telehealth’s rapid expansion indicates there’s no going back. As KPMG states about technology and hybrid healthcare: “Digital front doors are here to stay.”

Also, hybrid care models combine virtual and in-person experiences that will lead the patients to go through treatment care pathways, in-person elements — procedures, labs, imaging, immunizations — can be seamlessly combined with virtual elements, which might include remote monitoring or a telehealth visit with a specialist from home. With hybrid care, the physical joins the digital to create a cohesive experience for providers and patients alike.

Healthcare's future is now Hybrid healthcare

The experience during COVID-19 and the Amwell survey findings suggest we are in the midst of a rapid transition from virtual care to hybrid care and the term hybrid has taken on new meaning during COVID-19. Parents and teachers want to discuss hybrid schools and the Employers are building hybrid workplaces that blend remote work and face time. Therefore this new technological transition to hybrid care is not a clear path, it consists of obstacles while many consumers are still uncertain as to how to make use of these specific telehealth services but the pandemic has surely eased many long-standing barriers to adoption of telehealth despite physicians facing questions about the adoption of telehealth at their healthcare institutions. Telehealth transitioned from a “nice to have” to a “must-have” for many consumers, and clinicians, and healthcare providers. The pandemic changed the world forever, and the real one is nowhere but in healthcare.

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