Constraints in the transition to digital medicine
Driver of the development of modern medicine
However, there is one systemic drawback of such solutions - they do not have accurate data on the patient's condition during treatment, in real time.
All existing IT systems receive information abouttaking medications and the patient’s condition during treatment, either from the patient’s own words or as described by medical personnel. And even this data may not arrive immediately, but after a certain, often critically long period of time. And obtaining primary information about taking medications and the patient’s actual condition requires relatively high costs, and it can also be unsafe for medical personnel, for example, when working with infected patients. If the patient is undergoing home treatment, obtaining accurate information is completely impossible.
Decisions made by a doctor based on inaccurateinformation, may be incorrect or belated, which leads to the need for repeated treatment and additional rehabilitation, or may lead to a sad outcome.
People today are getting used more and more on their owntake care of yourself and your health. All the more relevant is the issue of strict adherence to the doctor's prescriptions and the schedule of medication. Solutions are being developed that control the course of treatment, collect data and transmit it to primary expert systems. For example, smart jars for medicines - such were offered by the Pillsy company. They are synchronized with the smartphone via the app and send information about the time of taking the downloaded drugs. The technology will be especially useful for older people - 37% of them forget to take their pills on time, and some are afraid of side effects or simply do not believe in the effectiveness of the proposed drug.
Another important trend is the active implementation of AIin drug development. First, it allows for faster processing of large libraries of data in the preclinical stage. Secondly, the use of AI speeds up development by 50–60% - this is important for situations when it comes to creating drugs for cancer, congenital pathologies and other severe systemic diseases.
Insilico Medicine reported that theirartificial intelligence GENTRL creates drugs against certain pathologies in just three weeks, while testing drugs on animals takes only 25 days. The traditional process would take about eight years. But AI does not guarantee the absolute effectiveness of the drug, however, and standard methods do not, but the difference in terms and financial costs is obvious. In the next 10 years, the use of artificial intelligence will reduce the cost of finding and developing new molecules by $ 70 billion.
Digital assistants
The main developments in MedTech today concerncloud platform solutions for managing the course of treatment, collecting and transmitting primary data in real time to expert systems. Technologies for collecting information and managing drug intake can be divided into several groups depending on their purpose.
The first group is solutions that help withconducting primary diagnostics and in the course of therapy, including in remote settlements. These are electronic stethoscopes with augmented reality elements, pulse oximeters, portable spirometers, and other small-sized digital devices. The Russian startup Laeneco has proposed a smart electronic stethoscope with ML-algorithms (machine learning algorithms - "Hi-Tech"), which is able to detect diseases of the bronchopulmonary system using audio recording and with a higher accuracy. The accuracy of neural networks is 83%, but the startup intends to increase the figure to 98%. And thanks to synchronization with a smartphone and receiving personalized recommendations after analyzing the data, such a stethoscope is available to the average person.
The second group is solutions for conductingtreatment. They use digital inhalers, pill containers, which were mentioned earlier, and digital injectors and self-injectors. All devices transmit objective data to the doctor about the patient, the fact of taking and the dose of drugs taken. Smart medicine jars are also available in the form of organizers, such as the Xiaomi product. It connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, calculates the schedule for taking pills, collects data, reminds with vibration or a signal for the next dose. There are smart lids for jars: GlowCap, which is put on the container and signals the need to drink the medicine. The chip detects when the jar has been opened and transmits this information to the application.
Digital dispensers fordrugs - they store and distribute drugs in doses, remind you of the time of admission, and some (such as Hero) can even automatically order expiring drugs at the pharmacy. They work in conjunction with a smartphone, send notifications to the doctor or patient's relative. There are also cam dispensers that control access to loaded drugs.
For diabetics, companies offer injectors,equipped with smart caps or sensors at the base of the insulin pen. Such technologies allow you to control the dispensed dosage and the number of uses of the device. For example, a gadget from Insulog is compatible with many disposable insulin pens and thanks to sensors it reads their triggering, records injections, and sends them to an application on a smartphone. On the screen of the gadget from Insulog, you can see information about the last application: time of the last injection, dose, amount of insulin for the current day.
Another interesting solution is a system forhypertension control from Livongo, created on the basis of voice technology. She collects and visualizes data from the tonometer and in real time gives individual advice to the patient: for example, at high pressure, she will recommend changing the diet and reducing the sodium level in food. The information is processed by AI, and the system speaks in the voice of its owner. All data is also transferred to the smartphone and can be sent to medical professionals from Livongo for assistance.
The advent of smartphones spurred developmentMedTech: Many systems have started using a camera to get confirmation that drugs are being taken on time. In addition, smartphones are becoming full-fledged medical assistants. For example, Apple uses the CareKit software for the Health app, which continuously monitors a person's condition. Data on physical activity, heart rate, blood pressure comes from Apple Watch or other wearable devices. However, the capabilities of the software environment do not end there - it can analyze temperature, medication intake, assess the level of fatigue, pain using third-party devices that integrate into the Apple Watch platform. For example, with One Drop devices for diabetics and their app of the same name, you can register and analyze data on blood glucose levels, receive a medication schedule with reminders.
Digital inhalers and platform solutions
The coronavirus pandemic also stimulated growthdigital services and development of the MedTech market. But his focus shifted to treating respiratory diseases. Digital inhalers have become a new category of the most popular assistants and the next step in the development of nebulizers. They make the therapy process as effective and safe as possible, solving the problem of inaccurate drug dosage.
Nebulizer- a small device for inhalation. Uses ultra-fine dispersed dispersion of the medicinal substance. Used in the treatment of cystic fibrosis, bronchial asthma and respiratory diseases.
Conventional inhalers are technologically adjusted toobtaining aerosols in only one way and do not take into account the characteristics of the patient, the drug and the inhalation process itself. A person can breathe at different depths and frequency, and inhalation solutions with different characteristics can be used for treatment. All this leads to a decrease in the effect of the drug or the appearance of side effects. Digital inhalers control the characteristics of the aerosol depending on the medication used, helping to reduce the dose of medication that the patient receives without decreasing their effectiveness.
The first such universal development wasdigital inhaler PM&HM. At the moment, the development has already been registered in Russia. The smart inhaler identifies the patient, controls the characteristics of the resulting aerosol and calculates the dose during inhalation. Essentially, this is a mini-computer that accurately calculates the inhalation process depending on the doctor’s prescription, the patient’s condition and the inhalation solution used. The device controls the characteristics of the resulting aerosol depending on the medicine used. It can be used with medications for the treatment of tuberculosis, oncology, asthma, COPD, cardiovascular diseases and pneumonia caused by COVID-19. The digital inhaler communicates with the telemedicine platform through a mobile application so that the doctor monitors the medication intake.
The inhaler has already been registered with the Ministry of Health,All that remains is to wait until it gets into Russian hospitals - it is planned that by 2025 at least 30% of specialized institutions will be equipped with it. Even patients with compulsory medical insurance policies will be able to access innovative treatment. Now patients with tuberculosis are already being treated with the help of such inhalers in the Trans-Baikal Territory.
What will change in the future
Solutions used for stagingprimary diagnosis can also be used for treatment due to their complexity and digital shell, if they can be combined into an ecosystem. Most of the new technological devices, especially the Russian design, do not differ in high cost, therefore they can be used for home treatment and patient control. Such a move will reduce the economic burden on the healthcare system, as well as simplify the approach to patient care.
Modern devices are collected and transferred toany information systems provide real-time data on the patient’s condition during initial diagnosis and during treatment. It is also possible to obtain objective data about the fact of taking and the dose of medication taken by a specific patient, and the remote ability to manage medication intake has been implemented.
It is difficult to predict at what speed the world andRussia will switch to fully digital treatment support, especially in the regions. At the moment, even medical records are not fully translated into electronic format (70% of physicians have difficulties with the transition to digital) - they plan to do this by the end of 2021. However, the pandemic has definitely stimulated the process of medicine's transition to a new level, in Moscow they even launched a digital hospital system. It is possible that remote patient management is a matter of the near future, and the process of providing medical care will change significantly very soon. There is every reason to believe that this transformation will be carried out primarily due to the automation and accuracy of the collection of primary information entering the expert medical IT systems.
See also:
The largest magnetic storm will allow you to see the northern lights from Moscow
The Doomsday glacier turned out to be more dangerous than scientists thought. We tell the main thing
Check out the most comprehensive catalog of billions of stars in the Milky Way