Intro

The field of healthcare & life science is especially interesting to me because it plays a very important role in our lives, there are many problems and opportunities that need to be solved, and the solution of which will have a significant positive impact on society as a whole.

Last week during a search for a new contract I offered one company in this field several relevant problems and potential solutions to deliver to the market based on three years of my work with doctors in my spare time.

Ideas

The issue of doctors extreme overload with paperwork

The issue is doctors spent big part of their job on preparing papers required by variety of organisations. It is already exceeds time they spend on treating patients, usually requires them to work on weekends and holidays even without payment for this time.

Possible solution is to fill required standard forms and other templated-based documentation by voice (machine learning, voice recognition), maximize amount of pre-filled templates for the most of cases for patients (database creating and gathering data, generative AI)

The issue of medical diagnosis

The issue is a human body is sophisticated system which takes 8 years to learn and 10 years of relevant practice to become a good doctor (Russia). However even good doctors have a right to make mistake. That's why an issue to make right medical diagnosis and following treatment is open and relevant.

Possible solution could be:

a. Gather database of patients medical history (complaints, symptoms, initial examination results, blood tests, diagnostics results, treatment results) by hospitals (possibly it would be better to start from the the most experienced doctors).
b. Based on this database create and expert system in a form of symptoms → possible options of diagnosis and treatment; the more primary data came to the system (blood tests etc.), then the more narrow down possible options of diagnosis become.
c. With a help of applying machine learning on database and usage experience, heuristics of system could be improved.

The system in any meaning doesn't replace a real doctor and does not take a responsibility to make a diagnosis. It justs help a doctor to narrow down possible options (diagnoses, treatment methods, drug therapy) be leverage the best practices of doctors from a whole country (or even the world, if private and government clinics of other countries will be added to the system)

The issue of existing digital document management software quality and the issue to duplicate this paperwork in traditional forms

At least on the level of Belgorod region, official digital document management system on government hospitals and clinics should be better:

1. Doctors have to deal with many bugs in the system (~50 bug reports per day, source: sys. admin from one clinic in Stary Oskol), some of them are critical for continue work with the system.

2. This together with some hardware & network issues push doctors to duplicate documents on paper by their hands. This system didn't make their paperwork easier, but made it even more difficult and time consuming.

Traditionally healthcare domain is strictly regulated by the government with all associated troubles. Offer an alternative solution without administrative resource is difficult if not impossible.

Possible solution should take under consideration current vendor relevant issues which are unknown for me, but just share with them best practices and possible solutions on issues I had observed, I have not received any feedback.

This data is year old. If nothing has changed to the better, there is an business opportunity to deliver on market superior digital document management system for government hospitals and clinics.

Case study on one similar issue:
Sync-up documents among hundreds of users across the country in unstable network environment and mitigate human mistakes.