Impact of Digital Transformation in Mexican Hospitals

With the world now fully immersed in a digital environment, and with so many technologies at our disposal, the healthcare system has found ways to innovate and develop solutions where they were needed. Learn how this has been achieved in Mexican hospitals.

Digitalization has become extremely important in today's modern world, and a sector as significant as healthcare and medicine could not be left behind. Digital transformation in hospitals must focus on improving patient care, facilitating physicians' work, reducing human error, and cutting costs.

2020 was identified as the year with the highest global investment in health technologies worldwide. In the context of the pandemic and everything happening at the healthcare level, investments in health digitalization tripled compared to previous years.

For the benefit of the healthcare system and patients, digital systems have now been incorporated into Mexican hospitals. Mexico's healthcare system is made up of several important entities, including physicians, patients, and private and public hospitals. All of them have advanced in this shift toward digitalization.

What Is Health Digitalization?

Health digitalization involves the use of technologies to eliminate the constraints of time and space, as well as extending the reach of the healthcare system to wherever patients are located. This makes it possible to achieve four important objectives:

1. Achieving better outcomes and increasing treatment quality through access to the right professional regardless of where the patient and specialist are located.
2. Improving access and convenience for patients, eliminating the need to travel or relocate when it is not possible or convenient to see a specialist, which improves the patient experience.
3. Improving physicians' experience by reducing the need to travel. This allows them to focus on patient care throughout their career and on more suitable workflows.
4. Cost reduction by leveraging scarce physicians and specialists across multiple clinical sites, hospitals, and offices simultaneously.

In other words, health digitalization helps provide specialized care and reduce the likelihood of medical errors. The use of technology makes it possible to integrate evidence-based best practices into professionals' clinical workflow, ensuring, for example, that the right medications are administered at the correct dose, at the right time. 

Many errors can be avoided by using the electronic health record, which is fundamentally important. The same applies to clearly defined and documented care plans, structured assessment tools, and clinical decision support for physicians.

On the other hand, PACS systems make a significant contribution to the digitalization of medical services, and also enable teleradiology. 

Benefits of Technology in the Healthcare System

1. Clinical records that are clearer, more accurate, and more accessible, staying continuously updated as healthcare providers collect data on their patients.
2. Critical processes are simplified, saving time whenever a patient has to fill out a form, since all information is linked and available in the event of an emergency.
3. Higher-quality data is collected, since it carries a lower margin of error than manual data entry.

Digitalization in Mexican Hospitals

According to one study, by 2016 health digitalization services had been installed in 30 hospitals in Mexico City, with the patient as the top priority. 

The digital clinical record is the first step toward securely managing each patient's data. As a result, interoperability is achieved among these hospital centers, improving patient safety and continuity of care. Likewise, greater service efficiency is achieved along with cost reduction from avoiding repeated tests.  

Some of the benefits obtained through this implementation included:

• Optimizing care processes and reducing patient wait times.
• Increasing prescription safety through the integration of standardized medication databases and the creation of drug alerts.
• Improving the informed consent management process (biometric signature).
• Improving the quality of health data through the implementation of the digital clinical record.
• Increasing patient safety and diagnostic accuracy.

Due to the pandemic, the use of available technologies had to be accelerated to avoid overwhelming Mexican hospitals. Both physicians and patients had to grow accustomed to using telemedicine as a way of accessing healthcare, starting with technological tools such as the phone, through video calls or virtual conferencing tools. 

At the public health level, the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias, Ismael Cosío Villegas (National Institute of Respiratory Diseases, INER) is Mexico's leading research center for respiratory diseases, as well as a highly specialized hospital in the field. With the support of Cisco, a global IT company, it installed a series of applications to improve service and open up new medical areas. This, in turn, provided the connectivity needed to implement remote visits, teleconsultation, streamlined medical reporting, and physician-patient interaction.

Impact on Mexican Society

The digitalization of Mexican hospitals has had a positive impact on society. With remote care, while preserving the quality of the physician-patient relationship, wait times are reduced without the need for exposure or travel. A mobile phone and an internet connection are all that is needed to establish highly effective communication. 

However, there is an economic barrier, since not all Mexicans have access to a mobile device, computer, or internet connection, which makes it difficult to reach every patient.  

This is according to statistical data presented in the 2020 Encuesta Nacional sobre Disponibilidad y Uso de Tecnologías de la Información en los Hogares (National Survey on Availability and Use of Information Technologies in Households, ENDUTIH), which found that only 78.3% of the urban population uses the internet. Among the rural population, usage stands at 50.4%. 

As for remote medical consultations, they account for 16% of private practice in Mexico, according to a study on the digital habits of the medical community. It was also found that 84% of physicians are connected online, mainly via smartphone. The main place of connection is the institution where they work (46%), followed by home (29%), which means continued investment is needed to consolidate this practice. 

Without a doubt, it remains a priority to keep investing in the shift toward digitalization of healthcare institutions in Mexico. Although significant investments have been made in infrastructure, more is still needed to consolidate these changes.

References

• Teleconsultation and Televisit INER. Cisco.

1.  Digitizing and connecting healthcare to improve efficiency and quality of care with ehCOS technology SAMIH_2016_v4 Success Story. 
2. Press Release. National Survey on Availability and Use of Information Technologies in Households, 2016. Inegi.
3. 1st Study on Physicians' Internet Habits in Mexico, April 2021. IRP.