The integrated digital healthcare revolution – Practical advice on moving to an information-centric integrated care model
This is the concluding post in this particular discussion about the integrated digital healthcare revolution. So far we’ve talked about how shifting to this way of working can take the burden away from general hospitals, empower patients and insurers, as well as help life science organisations find solutions to rising noncommunicable diseases. The overarching story here is that building an information-centric integrated care model is the key to unlocking efficiencies, cutting costs and improving patient care across the healthcare chain.
A secure auditable data-driven approach needs to be adopted in the healthcare industry as the ability to share information and best practices will be critical as we move towards a more digital world.
Technologies such as cloud computing, data lakes and big data analytics, all underpinned through document life cycle management solutions all play a key role in making this a reality and will be the cure for rising healthcare costs. Having a content management strategy in place will help organisations gain value and insights from their data. But what role does each of these technologies have to play within an integrated healthcare ecosystem?
Document life cycle solutions support structured and unstructured information capture, archival and secure access across multiple Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Electronic Health Records (EHR), computerised physician order entries (CPOE) and departmental applications. Data lakes offer a way to assemble this information gathered across an integrated health system, including content imported from outside sources and services, such as wearables and insurance providers.
By using Big Data analytics, a data lake is able to link and correlate content in entirely new ways, revealing important insights about macro health trends within a population, individual wellbeing, and healthcare organisations’ performance. This allows risks to be better managed and a better quality of care delivered, whilst reducing costs through better prevention.
Managing all of this information whilst leveraging cloud can help deploy applications faster, offer access from multiple locations and devices (such as fitness trackers and wearables) and, offer scalability to deal with the increasing volume of content. With increasing and stricter data regulations, information needs to be archived and retained for longer periods of time as part of a coherent archiving strategy but also quickly accessed, either as part of a governance requirement or, to provide deeper data analytics, increasingly critical in the digital information age.
Importantly, adoption of technology alone will not deliver the results needed. A consistent content strategy and implementation approach is required by healthcare providers to overcome business and technology challenges, in order to share patient information securely, effectively and efficiently.
Enabling clinical and lifestyle information to flow securely from one actor to another, is a powerful game changer to transform lives for the better, with implications potentially impacting other industries, such as energy and automotive.
I’d be interested to know how your organisation is approaching this digital shift and whether you have additional advice. Let me know in the comments below.