It is no secret that both 2020 and 2021 were massively turbulent years for a wide range of global industries and sectors but, despite this, there were still a number of major developments that dominated the healthcare sector in the past year and transformed the ways in which medical professionals and patients administered and received care.
If you are interested in finding out which revolutionary ideas transformed healthcare in 2021 as we edge closer towards the new year, continue reading to find out everything you need to know.
The mainstream adoption of big data
In the past couple of years, the idea of big data has grown and developed to the point where it is now a universally adopted feature of healthcare. It is, put simply, the term given to the sheer volume of information collected by digital technologies to collect patient records in a way that is simply unattainable for traditional data collection methods.
It may not be a necessarily new phenomenon but in 2021, it reached new heights when the global pandemic encouraged a growing number of medical professionals to adopt big data to streamline daily practices, reduce medical errors, and provide accurate treatment.
The introduction of self-retaining surgical retractors
In 2021, the introduction of the Galaxy ii self-retaining surgical retractor took the healthcare world by storm. It has allowed for hands-free operation during both minor and major surgical procedures, greater access to the site of operation, and, perhaps most importantly, means that fewer assistants are required to carry out an operation and, as a result, take up valuable space within an operating room.
If you are interested in finding out everything there is to know about self-retaining surgical retractors, see a complete overview of the award-winning Galaxy ii surgical retractor here.
The use of artificial intelligence in diagnosing cancer
In recent years, there has been a sharp incline in the number of healthcare developments to emerge focused on diagnosing cancer. It is artificial intelligence, however, where the healthcare sector appears to have made substantial progress with the digital trend recently outperforming human radiologists when it comes to diagnosing lung cancer in particular. In the coming years, it is set to be put to the test during the research and development stages of diagnosing a wide range of cancers in the hopes of making progress. It may sound promising so far but only time will tell how much of an impact artificial intelligence will have on the wider healthcare sector in the future.
If you work in the healthcare sector or just like to keep up to date with the latest medical trends and developments to emerge on a regular basis, you may be wondering which revolutionary ideas transformed healthcare during the past year. It is, for example, the mainstream adoption of big data, the introduction of self-retaining surgical retractors, and the use of artificial intelligence in diagnosing cancer that appeared to have had the greatest impact on both medical professionals and patients in 2021 alone.
