Medical assistants are an essential and vital part of any clinic or hospital. These individuals are well trained to manage clinical duties and perform administrative tasks. Medical assistants are professionally trained and able to conduct lab exams, collect specimens, draw blood and take electrocardiograms.
Their administrative duties include maintaining the front desk, filing medical records, and dealing with patient families. There is no point in being surprised to see the probability of exponential growth in the medical assisting field with so many tasks and responsibilities to do. Recent technological advancement in the medical assistant field proves to be challenging for the healthcare department as well as for patient
Recent technologies in the healthcare field
Technology is a vital need of the healthcare field to achieve more accuracy, precision and minimize the chance of errors. Engineers and researchers are in a continuous struggle to develop and evolve new medical technologies to increase the positive therapeutic outcomes of patients.
In this modern era, you cannot deny the significance of technology in the medical field and the challenges that medical assistants face. It’s worth mentioning that technology setups, software, and updated systems are of no use without the presence of trained and skillful medical staff.
Top 8 Recent technological advancement in the medical assistant field
1. Advanced method of drug development
One of the greater accomplishments of medical science in human history is the development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in less than one year. Along with regulatory fast-tracking, innovations in drug development methods and the application of recent technological advancement in medical assistant fields gives successful outcomes.
This combines efforts to create a spirit of collaboration instead of competition between pharmaceutical companies and mark a bright future in drug development.
The FDA has designed new guidelines for virtual trials that open a new door for the development and testing of new drugs.
2. Nano-medicine
Nanotechnology launches nano-medicine as its medical application. Nanotechnology is based on atomic, molecular, or supramolecular scales. Nanomedicine is small in size with huge potential and its application in senses. Diagnosis, imaging, and delivery through medical devices.
Researchers are continuously struggling in finding new ways to use nanomedicine to target individual cells and most probably outcomes will come in 2021 -2022. Some of the most highlighted work in nanomedicine are
- A pharmaceutical company Bluewillow biologics, has developed nanotech that can fight virus and bacteria
- Cytimmune Sciences has newly completed phase 1 trial of using gold nanoparticles to target drug delivery to tumors.
3. Advanced telemedicine
Telemedicine involves the use of electronic information to communicate technologies for accessing and supporting healthcare. Telemedicine evolves surprisingly to the pandemic of COVID 19 when people were being restricted to their house and a safe way of accessing the healthcare system is an electronic communication.
In 2022. Many health care organizations are focusing to improve and upgrade the system and move forward with advanced telemedicine. More efforts will be done to increase access to primary care and urgent care by increasing virtual visits as well as improving long-term care facilities, interaction with clinics, and mental health services.
4. Smarter pacemakers
An artificial pacemaker that has been used for 100 years is still an essential and critical device of medical technology. It works by sending an electrical impulse to heart chambers and is used by millions of patients to prevent arrhythmias.
In 2022, pacemakers will be transformed into a smarter version. Now pacemakers can be linked with smartphones’ apps. This will be done by enabling the pacemaker to connect with Bluetooth technology.
It will help patients in better understanding and utilization. In turn, this technology is assumed to improve remote monitoring and patient outcomes.
Medtronic, which is the most renowned company in the world in medical technology, has already announced its next-generation patient monitoring system for pacemakers.
5. 5G enabled devices
Recent technological advancements in medical assistant fields need a real-time connection to reach full potential services in the healthcare system. 5 G-enabled devices and 5G-connected sensors can record, capture and transmit data instantaneously that in turn gives improved patient outcomes by improving patent monitoring.
In telemedicine, the most instant benefits of 5 G-enabled devices can be seen by expanding access to care for millions of people. The patient will not wait for a long time to experience this change as experts stated that soon these devices will become accessible by health care systems for personalized, predictive, and effective services.
6. Tricorders
The origins of tricorders are in science fiction and for decades they have been used in medical technology. Its concept is decent and significant. Previously tricorders were imagined to be palm-sized devices that enable monitoring a wide array of vital signs accurately and quickly.
Now technology steps forward and rolled out a very smart tricorder named DextER. It can easily be operated by the patient without any medical training at his own house to pull patients’ data from different sources and run them through algorithms. DextER can recognize 34 different health conditions including
- Diabetes
- Strokes
- Pneumonia
- Tuberculosis
7. Health care digital assistant
Digital healthcare assistants have influenced the way people interact with technology. The most common Health care digital assistants are Alexa and google home. These medical assistants play their role in the capture, analysis, and utilization of health data. Ambient listening and natural processing language are the highlighted features.
A new voice assistant is launched by Al startup Saykara that can listen and understand Physician-patient conversation, without being operated through voice commands.
8. A lab on a chip
This idea was suggested by the researchers of Stanford university that it takes a long time to get and collect samples to the lab so why can’t we get the lab samples?. They recently developed a chip, about half the size of a credit card, and name it “ a lab on a chip”. This chip comprises a complex network of channels and can give the result of the coronavirus test in 30 minutes.
Researchers are now working to upgrade this chip so that it can be used for the detection of other infections also. A lab on a chip helps to perform safe, quick, and effective testing as the pandemic of corona tells the significance of testing to the world.
Conclusion
Recent technological advancement in the medical assistant field proves to be challenging for the healthcare department as well as for patients but also provides improved patient monitoring.
Tracking therapeutic outcomes and targeted drug delivery. In this modern era, you cannot deny the significance of technology in the medical field and the challenges that medical assistants face.
Technological advancement in the medical assistant field will continue to grow and evolve with the progression of time.