LEADERSHIP
28 long . Though there is a positive customer transition with the diagnostics capabilities of what you can do with your pocket device , he reckons it won ’ t be long before you can measure blood pressure with an iPhone . “ Out in the sticks , in India or Africa , if you don ’ t have access to opthalmoscopes or oroscopes , an attachment on an Android device could soon capture high resolution images to be sent to a centre for processing . Aetna has set up an IoT analysis function to look at new developments and judge which ones are worth investing in for our customers .” Aetna International aims to continue with its digital disruption by tackling the increase of customer data while looking for meaningful insights about their health to further deliver products and services more tailored to individual needs . “ We ’ re also further developing our virtual services provision ,” adds Dr Khemka . “ Away from specialist care , about 75 % of primary care efficiency is driven by a doctor taking a very good history and listening to you , taking time to hear about a patient ’ s issues . Rather than having around seven minutes for a consultation our doctors get an average of 22 minutes to listen and make a diagnosis before setting out on confirmatory investigations to deliver a really good treatment plan . Digital disruption in primary care excites me the most .” Dr Khemka cites the growing role for the Internet of Medical Things ( IoMT ) and Internet of Healthcare Things ( IoHT ) among exciting things happening in the hospital environment . “ Look at the massive rise in AI in radiology and tele-radiology . Radiologists examine x-rays and MRIs relying on pattern recognition to figure out what ’ s wrong with someone , whether that ’ s a tumour or a fracture . Actually , computers are much better at doing this . If you teach a computer the patterns to recognise it can perform this task more efficiently than the human mind , for example when detecting early cancers . The question for the human is how to interpret that . If the computer finds a 3cm polyp in a patient ’ s colon you then need the human intervention to determine whether the colon is bleeding , examine the patient ’ s familial history and decipher what the scan means . “ The use of AI can free up the doctor ’ s
AUGUST 2018