“Healthcare solutions must focus on a patient-first approach” – Dr. Pooja Kohli, Vice President, Hemp Street
World Patients Day is celebrated to raise awareness of patient safety around the world and to improve understanding of why patient safety plays a significant role in achieving sustainable development goals and mainstreaming wellbeing. The day is also designed to bring families, patients, caregivers, healthcare workers and communities together to be part of patient safe healthcare.
The day was used to reduce such global health problems and around 190 nations that are members of WHO support the foundation, this will help achieve comprehensive health care for patients around the world.
World Patient Safety Day: History, Importance and Issues
World Patient Safety Day was launched in May 2019 when the World Health Assembly passed a resolution on global patient safety action. The overall goal of World Patient Safety Day is to increase commitment to medical safety and promote global action to improve patient safety and reduce patient harm.
There is no doubt that both the quality and quantity of medical services available have improved. Due to the complexity of the modern healthcare system, however, the number of patients is also doubling.
Medication errors occur when poor medical conditions and human factors such as weakness, natural circumstances, or staff shortages affect the well-being of the drug use process. This can lead to extreme patient mischief, incompetence and even passing. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the overall risk of medication errors and prescription-related injuries. With this in mind, “Drug Safety” was chosen as the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2022, with the trademark “Drugs Without Harm”.
The global campaign reaffirms the goals of the WHO Global Patient Security Challenge: Medicine Without Harm, launched by the WHO in 2017. The campaign is reaching out to partners to focus on key geographies and take early action associated with tremendous patient harm from unsafe prescribing practices. These include high-risk circumstances, treatment changes, polypharmacy (simultaneous use of many prescriptions) and copies, sounding drugs.
World Patient Safety Day: What it means for India
India’s healthcare industry is one of the largest in the world and has grown much faster since COVID-19. Health information technologies have improved allocation efficiency in the clinical process and led to revolutionary changes in healthcare systems. Among the many benefits of online patient care, such as availability and affordability, digital access is still a concern for some patients, particularly from Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and beyond, who may have limited internet access. In addition, online healthcare fails to provide comprehensive care for patients who are unable to share their symptoms and need real-time medical attention.
To achieve better healthcare outcomes, offline healthcare support needs to be mobilized with online pharma tech companies/startups that combine the power of technology and human ingenuity to deliver last mile patient care. While the healthcare industry has made tremendous strides, a strong doctor-patient relationship remains at the heart of effective and efficient healthcare treatment. The focus must be on building a “patient first” approach by focusing on online healthcare for those “who want” and offline healthcare for those who “need”.
Disclaimer
The views expressed above are the author’s own.
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