COVID-19 clearly garnered all of the headlines in 2020 but that didn’t stop the rising tide of chronic conditions and the highest mortality rate attributions. It is never easy to report on leading causes of disease and death and while the entire world has its eyes on the current pandemic, the seven most chronic diseases continue to deliver devasting impact by orders of magnitude in comparison to COVID-19.

As most people are still evaluating and setting a few New Year’s Resolutions, it may be time to add a few to your list as a medical professional. While the pandemic doesn’t seem to be lessening any restrictions, it looks like the need for remote access to care is going to continue to be the norm as we dive deeper into 2021. The need for digital medicine goes beyond just televisits and extends into the entire ambulatory patient care journey.

While the US government has taken steps throughout the years to improve healthcare in various forms, it is the 21^st Century Cures Act that has had some of the most impact on the digitization of healthcare. The original act was passed in 2016and now the 2.0 version is set for 2021.

From all of us at Noteworth, we would just like to extend a huge note of gratitude to all of our existing customers as well as all of our potentially new customers and partners reading this blog today.

As 2020 comes to a close, it is time to take stock of ongoing market dynamics (i.e. pandemic requirements), growth, patient expectations and the level of digital transformation your healthcare organization has undergone and is prepared to further adopt. Digital Medicine has become table stakes and organizations not already started down this path will find themselves at serious risk in 2021. The time is now to evaluate and put in place technologies that can dramatically improve your patient care journey.

There are too many factors to count that go into the patient care journey to truly understand which has the most significant impact if a better understanding was available. However, one factor has proven to have a significant impact of a clinician’s ability to better diagnose in order to provide more specific proactive interventions and that is the social determinants of health.

Improving the patient care journey is paramount to healthcare professionals across all disciplines. Especially based on the requirements imposed by the current pandemic and the ongoing need to address increasing numbers of ambulatory patients. A number of digital healthcare solutions have shown up in the last decade to digitize patient records and automate areas such as remote patient monitoring and chronic care management, but the best solution will ultimately be one that crosses all patient care boundaries under one platform and that is at the heart of Digital Medicine.

The pandemic has certainly changed everyone’s expectation on how the subject of healthcare should be addressed. On one hand, it has created an entirely new class of pressure on all current systems from small physician collectives to large hospital groups and everything in between. On the other hand, it has opened the door to new technologies that facilitate contactless healthcare and it seems that clinicians and patients alike are really embracing this new paradigm.

We wanted to give you more reasons to come back to https://noteworth.com frequently, so we have revamped and relaunched our website. In addition to the latest Noteworth offerings for all things Digital Medicine, you can now find more resources and timely content to keep you informed and educated on what’s important for you to succeed in your role in improving your patient’s care journey while reducing operating costs and opening new avenues for billing.

While we have not quite reached Terminator status where AI and machines will take over the world, we have come to a place where technology that is connected to the internet is improving the ability for physicians to monitor, collect data, assess and proactively intervene to improve the patient care journey. A big part of this is the rise of Healthcare IoT.