Wellness & Fitness

Less microscope the image of disruption

microscope

The microscope is on the deathbed. FILE PHOTO | NMG

These are interesting times where technological advances are seeing rapidly evolving approaches to work and revolutionising industries. This isn’t just in machinery, but business processes too.

Self-driving vehicles, robots in workplaces and software analytics instead of data clerks are all creating novel business models and products.

The implications of such disruptive changes are being felt, causing concern in the labour space.

Uber has disrupted the traditional taxi industry model, but a potentially synergistic technology could make this model even more cost-cutting. Imagine Uber running a fleet of self-driving vehicles. This approach leaves one with points to ponder on healthcare disruptions. As a heavily labour-intensive profession, how will technology and novel business models affect us?Currently most of our advances are in the area of diagnostics and the old laboratory model will be totally reconfigured in a few years to come.

This era has been ushered by the death of the microscope. While in the past this device was the bedrock of diagnostics; accounting for up to 80 per cent of lab tests, it now accounts for less than 15 per cent of investigations done.

It is predicted that this figure will fall further as advances in genomics and immunology render it obsolete.

Rapid diagnostic kits are taking over. Initiatives like ‘Lab In a box’ geared towards having 100 diagnostic tests fit in a suitcase are impressive. The implications though on the lab personnel cannot be wished away. It will take one staff two hours to do what previously took one day.

For employers, this is good news for employee redundancy beckons. Another area being targeted for disruption is medical consultation.

Some patients with chronic ailments feel repeat hospital visits are unnecessary and a total drain of time and costs.

Wearable patient monitors transmitting patient data to doctors and telemedicine are being fronted to eliminate this.

Telemedicine may become a popular model for doctors not keen on heavy daily commutes.

With about Sh1,000 attributed to ‘logistics’ working from home may gain favour with doctors, but will patients embrace telemedicine?

Support for innovation on efficiency, reduced hospital stays for patients and cost containment are all necessary.