Although U.S. healthcare professionals are among the leaders in leveraging digital health records, the country falls behind the 15-nation average for most other digital technologies examined, according to new research from Philips.
The company’s U.S. Future Health Index (FHI) 2019 report showed that the use of telehealth and artificial intelligence (AI) are among the largest opportunities for improvement of quality and cost savings in healthcare, while more broadly noting that digital health technologies have the potential to reduce healthcare professional workload, curb healthcare professional burnout and enhance their satisfaction. However, many American healthcare professionals are not harnessing the full potential and support of digital health technology in all aspects of their work, the study’s authors concluded.
The report revealed that while about 84 percent of healthcare professionals in the U.S. are using EHRs, only 46 percent of U.S. healthcare professionals use telehealth, compared to the 15-country average of 61 percent.
What’s more, just 33 percent of U.S. healthcare professionals use AI-powered solutions in their practice or hospital, but countries such as Germany (41 percent) and China (85 percent) surpass the U.S. in the use of AI technologies among healthcare professionals. This is despite the fact that the U.S. has one of the highest spends of AI in healthcare for preliminary diagnosis per capita at $0.06, while China’s spend is $0.002 per capita and Germany’s is $0.03 per capita, according to the report.
The index is based on a survey of more than 15,000 individuals and more than 3,100 healthcare professionals in 15 countries, and explores health technology’s impact on the patient and healthcare professional experience.
Also of note, American healthcare professionals cited a lack of interoperability (52 percent) between record systems as a reason why they do not share health records among their peers inside their healthcare facility, and 57 percent cited a lack of access to these systems.
The report also revealed that many American individuals (58 percent) have not seen a healthcare professional when they had a medical reason to do so – often due to lack of time, difficulty in scheduling an appointment and availability of a specialist or care provider in their area. The adoption of telehealth technologies, of course, could help mitigate these issues as a quarter (25 percent) of American individuals have already reported that being able to consult with their doctor remotely for follow-up appointments through video or voice calls has improved their experience of healthcare in the last five years.
There has been no shortage of studies linking EHRs and other healthcare technology to physician burnout, and the Phillips report accordingly found that healthcare professionals in the U.S. using EHRs were among the most likely to believe that the adoption of these systems in their hospital or practice had a negative impact on time spent with a patient (53 percent), healthcare professional workload (61 percent) and healthcare professional satisfaction (44 percent).
To this point, just 37 percent of Americans surveyed associate AI in healthcare with less human interaction, and only 20 percent of individuals associate AI with more accurate diagnosis.
Finally, in the U.S., behaviors related to digital health technology and its rate of adoption vary from one generation to the next, the report revealed. While about two-thirds (63 percent) of individuals surveyed track health data sometimes/often/always with an application or device, 42 percent of millennials do not feel that this data is important for their healthcare professional to know, and 23 percent of millennials do not know how to share their data with a healthcare professional. One in five (20%) millennials, do not want to share their data, on par with Americans overall (18 percent).
