The Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry (also called the medical industry or health economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. It includes the generation and commercialization of goods and services lending themselves to maintaining and re-establishing health. The modern healthcare industry is divided into many sectors and depends on interdisciplinary teams of trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet health needs of individuals and populations.

The healthcare industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy. For the purpose of finance and management, the healthcare industry is divided into several areas. The United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) categorizes the healthcare industry as generally consisting of:

• Hospital activities;
• Medical and dental practice activities;
• "Other human health activities".

This third class involves activities of, or under the supervision of, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, scientific or diagnostic laboratories, pathology clinics, residential health facilities, or other allied health professions, e.

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g. in the field of optometry, hydrotherapy, medical massage, yoga therapy, music therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, chiropody, homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc. The Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark further distinguish the industry as two main groups:1. healthcare equipment and services; and2. pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and related life sciences.The healthcare equipment and services group consists of companies and entities that provide medical equipment, medical supplies, and healthcare services, such as hospitals, home healthcare providers, and nursing homes.

The latter listed industry group includes companies that produce biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and miscellaneous scientific services. Medicine has not emerged as a science, as it is known today.

History of healthcare before 1960 is a fragmented collection of unrelated events, and don't represent a rationalized effort. Much of history is embedded in day-to-day medical and surgical practice and QIA, that it is considered as such. For to understand and appreciate how this events improve healthcare quality, broad categories have been developed to identify global innovations in Europe, Asia and The United States (U.S.). So here are history of inventions which had a big impact in healthcare industry:In 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen accidently discovered X-rays in Germany by producing a fast stream of electrons that come to a sudden stop at a metal plate. His discovery revolutionized the ability to diagnose and musculo-skeletal disorders and injuries (Assmus, 1995). Advances in radiology primarily in France eventually led to the treatment of cancerous tumors and he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 (Nobel Prize Organization, 2013a).Another three time Nobel Prize nominee was, Dr. Peter Safar, known as the architect of Intensive Care. Developed an A"B"C technique (which stood for airway/breathing/circulation) for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in 1956 at Baltimore City Hospital, noting that the best results were achieved by tilting the head back and pulling the jaw forward. His research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1958 (Srikameswaran, 2003).

The evidence provided by his research helped CPR gain world-wide acceptance. He approached a Norwegian toymaker; Asmund Laerdal to develop a realistic mannequin for Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training, the resulting prototype became the life-size Resusci-Anne doll. This prototype was the basis for much of the emergency simulation training that is now a standard part of healthcare education (Srikameswaran, 2003).In the late 1950s Dr. Safar revolutionized the quality of pre-hospital care by convincing the Baltimore City Fire Department to improve the transport of patients to hospitals utilizing fully equipped ambulances staffed with emergency medical technicians rather than the ordinary station wagons or hearses that were being used. He is also credited for establishing the first 24-hour Intensive Care Unit in the United States and is considered a giant in the field of resuscitation research (Sullivan, 2003). In recent years, technological advances have helped physicians provide the latest and most accurate tools to save lives, but also empower patients with their own health status through various applications and devices that monitor essential medical parameters. Three modern technologies such as mobility, cloud and big data have transformed the information & technology in healthcare.

Many companies and startups have been focusing on the innovations to contribute in the healthcare industry and building health IT solutions. In 2016, which is considered as the biggest year of healthcare technology innovations, there were many innovations including medical devices, software and gadgets. 2017 could witness many innovations and health care solutions in the fields of technology infrastructure, payment models, care models and disease management applications. Experts in the healthcare believe that by 2018, more than 70% of healthcare organizations would invest in consumer-facing mobile apps, wearable health gadgets, remote health monitoring tools and virtual care. By 2020, health data will travel through the cloud, the mobility solutions to touch $83 million from $65 in 2015. A change that has brought many benefits has been the digitization of health records (EHR). Replacing paper records has been a "game changer" for many allied healthcare professionals. This new implementation impacted medical assistants, medical records and health information technicians, medical billing and coding professionals, and also registered nurses.

Nurses and technicians are now responsible for inputting patient data into a central, digitized system. Medical billers and coders use EHR for scheduling appointments, updating patient records with diagnostic codes, and submitting medical claims. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) helps to improve public health care, enhanced patient care, EHR are accessed in almost all medical facilities, and it are very useful for doctors. EHR automatically alert treating physician about potential issues (allergies, intolerances to certain medicines). Also EHR made more ease of workflow and reduces the cost of outpatient care by 3% (these researchers estimated this as $5.14 in savings per patient each month). Big Data is the buzzword of the digital age. The term "big data" refers to the enormous amounts of data collected from a variety of sources that are then processed and used for analytics. Healthcare is an industry which work with public, this mean that daily healthcare collects and stores huge amount of data. This information has multiple benefits, such as:

• Reducing healthcare costs;
• Predicting epidemics;
• Avoiding preventable deaths;
• Improving quality of life;
• Reducing healthcare wastage;
• Improving efficiency and quality of care;
• Developing new drugs and treatments.

With the transition to the EHR, and taking into account the amount of data collected by health institutions, they are required to have cost-effective and safe expansion solutions. This is where The Cloud comes in. This is perhaps one of the most innovative products in healthcare technology today. The Cloud uses hardware and software to deliver services via the internet. Cloud-based computing is on the rise in the healthcare and it has the advantages like cost efficiency, access to information and security.

Spending on cloud could touch to $9.5 billion by 2020. It will improve analysis and information tracking and enable on-demand access to computing and large storage facilities. Cloud have many benefits:o allows for masses of information to be stored at a low cost; o storage protects against the loss of sensitive data with strong backup and recovery services;o is an invaluable tool for medical research, as well as for sharing medical information.In a survey of 105 healthcare industry IT professionals, 59% said they were using/planning to use the cloud for data analysis, and more than 75% for health information exchange. This new ability to share big data easily has helped lead to the development of life-saving drugs.