AV AND HEALTHCARE
Despite what you may think, healthcare is one of the industries that will suffer a major change with the introduction of autonomous vehicles. In this article we will go through some of the biggest impacts it will have on healthcare.
On 2016 Joshua Neally was driving his Model X Tesla vehicle when suddenly he started to feel a very severe pain in his chest. He realized he couldn’t continue driving. He activated the Tesla autopilot and ordered it to take him to the closest hospital. After 32 km he got the hospital where they discovered he had a pulmonary embolism. The autopilot is right now a support tool during driving but with this example we can clearly see it saved Neally’s life. Apart from the autopilot, other features related to healthcare could be included in the car. For examples connection to personal wearables such as Apple Watch. This could mean that even before Neally knew something was happening to him, the car could already be calculating the optimal route to the nearest hospital.
Medical Appointments
A main challenge for every health system, specially when it comes to the vulnerable part of the population as elderly or disabled people is that they miss appointments, this happens with about 18-30 % of appointments. One of the main reasons that make this happen is the lack of transportation. People do not have the means to move from their house to the hospital, specially when they live on the outskirts of town where, many times, public transport is not an option. Autonomous vehicles could be the solution to this problem. They could pick patients up at their homes following the hospital’s schedule and return them back.
Emergency Autonomous Cars
When an emergency occurs, it is fundamental that the patient gets medical support in just a couple of minutes. Autonomous vehicles and virtual technologies could be the answer to this problem. During the past years, a Autonomous Emergency Response (AER) system is being developed. This system would manage self-driving ambulances. Whenever an emergency occurred, they would employ real-time data analytics to get to patients in the fastest way. They could also provide life-support practices and give information to pedestrians in case they had to perform some type of intervention. They could even use Virtual Reality to get physicians in touch with the patient. Thinking ahead in the future, drones could also play a crucial role in emergencies, for example delivering medical tools or capturing contextual information of the patient.
Cars as personal paramedic
On 2016 Joshua Neally was driving his Model X Tesla vehicle when suddenly he started to feel a very severe pain in his chest. He realized he couldn’t continue driving. He activated the Tesla autopilot and ordered it to take him to the closest hospital. After 32 km he got the hospital where they discovered he had a pulmonary embolism. The autopilot is right now a support tool during driving but with this example we can clearly see it saved Neally’s life. Apart from the autopilot, other features related to healthcare could be included in the car. For examples connection to personal wearables such as Apple Watch. This could mean that even before Neally knew something was happening to him, the car could already be calculating the optimal route to the nearest hospital.
These were just three of the innovations autonomous vehicles will mean in the healthcare industry but there are many more. What do you think? Have you ever thought about a AV-based idea that could help save people's lives?
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