Healthcare is a feature of daily conversations both at home and in the media, while the National Health Service in the UK also remains a political football that often dominates national elections.
Of course, the NHS is always forced to cope with a vast array of challenges, while significant spending cuts and austerity measures have also seen investment levels fall to worrying lows during the last decade.
In this post, we’ll appraise some of the challenges that face a modern healthcare system, while asking how hospitals and healthcare providers across the globe can help to mitigate and overcome these.
An Ageing Population – What Does This Mean for the NHS?
Ironically, as technological and scientific advancement has continued at pace, so too have the medications and treatments for specific conditions.
While this is fundamentally good news, it has also contributed to an aging population throughout the western world. It’s estimated that one-in-four UK citizens will be aged 65 or older by 2041, for example, while the median age of the population in the U.S. increased from 29.5 years to 38.2 years between 1960 and 2018 alone.
Ageing population happens when the average age rises. It is considered to be a threat to the economic situation in the country, but it will affect the health sector undoubtedly. When the Government faces this kind of problem, they undertake a set f measures meant to improve the whole situation.
Within the next decade, the population will get older and older. This undoubtedly places a greater strain on public and national health agencies, and coping with this is one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare providers. The NHS will have to reconsider part of its offers due to the uncertainty of the problems that rise as a result of the aging population. The strain will continue to hold force in the next years, imposing the need for an effective solution.
It’s also one that will continue for the foreseeable future, with the average age of the population expected to increase incrementally over the course of the next 30 years and beyond.
How Improved Technology Can Mitigate this Challenge
This poses an even greater challenge when you consider that the NHS (and indeed any large-scale healthcare provider) is reliant on large and often complex data sets.
There’s also a pressing need for data to be shared between different providers and departments, creating a situation where more information must be collated, stored and organised by over-worked administrators over time. All that need for paperwork is obstructing the normal flow of the process, which puts stress on the ones directly included: the health workers.
One way in which healthcare organisations can cope with this is by transitioning to electronic patient records, which negate the need for time-consuming administration. These records can also be shared and updated in real-time, enabling practitioners to access the very latest and most important data as and when required. This will allow for the health workers to act fast and save lives, without having to go through the paperwork obtaining procedures.
On another note, it’s important to ensure that hospitals and providers have the necessary hardware to store and maintain constant access to key data sets. This factor is crucial for the implementation of the new practices that will revolutionize the health system.
This require reliable hardware and efficient power supplies, with AC to DC converters offering a relevant case in point. These convertors provide a more efficient and compact source of power, which is ideal for various healthcare applications and a large-scale (and interconnected) computer network.
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Interesting related article: “What is Healthcare?”