Reduce healthcare costs by converting smart homes to medical homes

With the cost of living rising on a daily basis, healthcare costs are also on the rise and that is another major concern for many people. People living in countries where there are limited options for healthcare benefits and expenses are finding it very difficult to cope with the increase in healthcare expenses.

Although in a few countries, there are various healthcare services available with a variety of benefits. This includes the services where hospitals accept Medicare plans or policies and other government-funded programs. Even then, the people are finding it difficult to cope with the costs.

 A look at the recent research on the yearly figures of hospital trips

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The CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a research recently, which highlighted that only in the US; the average number of trips made to the hospital on a yearly basis was close to 136.6 million. The costs incurred just by going the ER ranged in between $1500 to $2500. With these figures, you can clearly understand why there is a concern and how critical healthcare services are.

The research also highlighted that the number of visits that could have been avoided.  The figures were close to 100 million while 40.2 ER visits were for various injuries. A simple visit to the doctor’s office is a lot cheaper than a visit to the ER. It is not just in the US but even in other countries, companies and experts are coming together to come up with ways to help reduce the number of visits to the hospital as well as reduce the costs incurred for healthcare services.

The solution – Smart Medical Homes

One of the solutions provided was Smart Medical Homes. The design and concepts of these homes is to keep a track of the person’s health. They will also be equipped with the necessary facilities to send out the necessary alerts and notifications to the doctor whenever there is a need. Even the doctors can access the medical information of the patient easily through the information transited to healthcare workers.

Presently various devices in the market are healthcare centric. The functionality of these devices is to cater to the different needs of people and professionals. However, the focus of these devices is more towards a particular task or certain diagnosis.

With the smart medical homes, not just devices matter but also the other services and analysis. The access to the information can also be availed directly from home. This will help in the prevention of many diseases since these sensors/technologies can detect them while they are at their early stages. The Smart homes concept will also help in the reduction of the costs incurred for healthcare services.

Even the clothes or shoes will have sensors that will help in keeping a track of the health of a person. In case there is a minor change in the body pattern where the system/sensor feels there is a medical problem, it will send out an alert to the doctor and if needed will also request medical assistance as soon as possible.

The smart medical home is a combination of a smart home, which is patient centric. Patients who have a medical condition or a special need can have their homes customized to suit their requirements. The one catch here is that the patient would need to ensure that they have a good and reliable internet connection to ensure that everything goes smoothly.

This will be important to ensure that the relevant data is available whenever needed or whenever requested. What is even more important is that the sensors/ systems or technology should be designed keeping in mind not just a particular disease but also the generic health of the person.

With the help of medical homes, many problems will actually be resolved before the condition gets worse. For patients who need constant monitoring, smart homes will become a boon. This is because of the feature and facilities that smart medical homes have to offer. With the combination of smart home products and medical homes, we can clearly see that the future is working more towards the betterment of the lives of people in the best ways possible.

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