Future of Healthcare

A Mediaplanet Guide to Healthcare Today and Tomorrow

Future of Healthcare Three pediatric hematology/ oncology nurses share how they pursued their calling

Hear the experts talk about the present and future of healthcare Here’s how telehealth will continue defining the future

DECEMBER 2020 | FUTUREOFPERSONALHEALTH.COM

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Interoperability is beginning to put data into the hands of patients, providing a holistic view of our health.

It makes sure our doctors receive our information from a hospital visit or send an X-ray from one office to another. Connected technologies can prevent hospitalization or even tragedy for people with life-threatening chronic conditions.

Steve Wretling Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, HIMSS

Interoperability is the gateway to patient empowerment. It is the foundation for enabling digital health and digital health innovation.

Technology has made it easy to access and interpret our personal data. The capability of one device to connect to another is called interoperability. It can be as simple as connecting a wireless mouse to a computer.

In healthcare, interoperability means communicating information to your healthcare providers while making them actionable to you as a patient. In practice, your devices can remind you to pick up your prescriptions or encourage you to take more steps. Our data helps us make personal choices, and it allows @MEDIAPLANETUSA

On Interoperability’s Role in Better Health our care teams to quickly offer the best recommendations, like prompting us to schedule a health screening.

Interoperability in COVID-19 We’ve seen how the COVID19 pandemic has affected our willingness and ability to seek healthcare in person.

It has brought forward the need for seamless telehealth @FUTUREOFPERSONALHEALTH

options, whether meeting virtually with a doctor or looking up a health record.

Interoperability enables us to receive high-quality care from anywhere, including our homes. Doctors can deploy devices like thermometers and pulse oximeters to help monitor our health and to allow us to heal in our homes, which is more comfortable than a hospital stay.

Interoperability is also essential towards creating and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine. Sharing our vaccination record could free us from the pandemic simply by proving we’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine. Further, the ability to share data to the proper health jurisdictions about who has been vaccinated will contribute to better care and decision-making for public safety.

A caveat However, if one system doesn’t have quality data and standard terminology, the data can’t be used in another system. In order to make this work better in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for IT is working on addressing these challenges with the right nationwide technical infrastructure and enactment of rules through the 21st Century Cures Act. We will see more tools and more capabilities available for consumers as access to health data becomes available. This means more health apps will be available on your phone and computer. n

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Securing the Remote Future of Healthcare and Patient Identity The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift into telehealth. Now healthcare institutions face a new challenge: making it secure.

For years, telehealth services have languished. Just a few years ago 82 percent of U.S. consumers had never used a remote healthcare service.

Then everything changed.

“The pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation dramatically,” says Karly Rowe, vice president of patient access, identity, and care management product at Experian Health.

Remote challenges That increased demand for remote health services has stressed healthcare providers. The effects of the pandemic were unprecedented, and hospitals and other institutions lacked any sort of roadmap for it, forcing them to improvise.

That improvisation and increase in remote health services also brings security challenges because they access sensitive patient data. The FBI has warned of an increase in ransomware attacks against healthcare institutions. These attacks typically use phishing email techniques to gain unauthorized access to networks, encrypt the data, and charge a ransom (typically in untraceable cryptocurrency) to unlock everything.

“With increased adoption comes an increased threat,” Rowe points out. “The healthcare industry should expect to see increased ransomware attacks and fraudulent activity because bad actors are following the activity. What that means in terms of the healthcare industry is that more vigilance and thought are necessary when considering what patient access tools to use and how to secure them,” says Rowe.

Better tools The need to secure patient data and protect internal networks requires a suite of solutions.

“It’s not like there’s a silver bullet,” Rowe says. “It’s a multipronged strategy that health organizations need to consider, and it’s going to evolve.”

Implementing video visits, for example, requires integrating a video platform into existing EHR systems.

Suddenly having 80 percent of a hospital’s workforce working remotely requires setting up extra security layers, like two-factor authentication (2FA) and network monitoring capabilities. To achieve these goals, Rowe stresses that healthcare systems need the right partners.

“Experian Health provides several authentication tools to help verify a patient’s identity, making access both convenient and secure for the patient,” she explains.

“We integrate with most of the large EHR vendors and provide a service that’s very similar to an experience you might have in financial services or when signing on to a

retailer for the first time from a different device.”

The benefits of partnering with a trusted vendor to automate this process goes beyond security. “It allows our providers to focus on providing care to patients instead of going about a manual process to input a patient’s information or send a security code,” Rowe notes. “Our service helps automate that whole workflow.”

Another benefit is speed.

Setting up services like video visits from scratch would typically take a year or longer for most institutions. In some cases, the pandemic required activation in just weeks.

“During COVID we’ve had clients up and running on this critical service in less than 10 days,” Rowe notes. “And then we start ongoing optimiza-

tion. We work with them on configuration. We provide best practices based on what we’ve seen in the industry — we’ve been providing these services for many years and have hundreds of clients.”

Setting up these tools now will pay off in the future. Telehealth, for example, was once only common in isolated, rural areas, but it’s suddenly everywhere. Now that people are comfortable with the technology, chances are it will continue to grow in popularity even after the pandemic ends.

“Consumers are getting much more interested in what they’re paying for and that includes the experience,” Rowe adds. “They expect it to match the consumer experience in other areas of their life that deliver simplicity and convenience.”

It all comes back to the patients that healthcare systems serve. “Healthcare should not be something that people dread to engage [with],” Rowe says. “It’s clearly imperative we move to a digital platform. And that’s where the security element has to perform effectively and without adding friction.” n Jeff Somers

To learn more about how to protect your patients and improve security, visit experian.com/healthcare.

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Driven by the Pandemic, Career Choices for Nurses Are Broader Than Ever Before Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the ambulatory care nurse has never been more important.

Ambulatory care nurses are highly trained healthcare experts who practice in outpatient settings.

They work as clinicians, telehealth nurses, care coordinators, researchers, educators, administrators, and top-level executives.

Telehealth nursing, in particular, has moved to the forefront in care during the pandemic. This area of ambulatory care nursing practice has become critical, as nurses are needed to support the most vulnerable patients.

Similarly, there has been an increased focus on population and public health nursing. These ambulatory care nurses have advanced knowledge of communities with chronic healthcare needs, aware that age, race, and poverty can prevent access to care.

Telehealth and community nursing are just two examples of how care has moved to outpatient settings in the country, boosting the scope of careers for nurses outside of acute care.

A wealth of opportunity

As a result, nurses can choose from an expanding variety of settings that include private medical and surgical practices, ambulatory surgery centers, university health services, school-based clinics, community clinics, workplace health services, home care, and hospice.

Most nurses entering a career in ambulatory care nursing hold an entry-level BS or BSN degree.

Nurses who want to specialize in telehealth, care coordination and transition management, and home care often reach out to professional organizations like the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing for support in developing the new skills.

As nurses progress in their careers, they often seek leadership positions such as nurse manager, director, or clinical administrator. These positions often require a master’s degree to broaden knowledge of business operations.

Many ambulatory care nurse leaders culminate their careers as senior executives, vice presidents, CNOs, and CEOs. These nurse leaders often complement their career with an advanced degree such as DNP or Ph.D. In these high-level roles, the visibility of nurses as decision-makers is raised and these leaders are well-positioned to represent the concerns of nurses worldwide.

Eileen M. Esposito, DNP, RN-BC, CPHQ, Director, American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing Board of Directors

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Access to Telehealth Removes Barriers to Care for All The pandemic has taught us valuable lessons, especially regarding the quality and availability of telehealth services.

Practically overnight, “telehealth” became a household word, offering a vital lifeline for patients and healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for those in rural and underserved communities. Now, there can be no turning back.

Millions of Americans liked the telehealth care they received, most for the first time.

Since the outset of the pandemic, telehealth usage has increased three-fold, from 14 percent in October 2019 to 43 percent as of September 2020, according to a recent Gallup survey. This research also revealed that 50 percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat likely to use telehealth in the coming year, whether or not they’ve experienced telehealth thus far.

which have been exposed by COVID-19, it can certainly play a big part in the solution.

As a bipartisan priority, we cannot increase access to care without including telehealth as an option.

• Telehealth is helping Americans overcome barriers to seeking care. According to Gallup, fear of contracting COVID-19 is the top reason people were interested in telehealth, with 74 percent likely to use telehealth in the next year. Other barriers driving people to try telehealth include challenges with transportation and work schedules, childcare or other family responsibilities, and the quality of available care.

What have we learned in the past eight months?

Telehealth is healthcare. By creating a • hybrid care delivery system — including in-person and virtual care options — we will create a world where all people receive safe, effective, and appropriate care when and where they need it.

However, if policymakers in Washington and in state capitals across the country do not act swiftly to permanently remove regulatory hurdles that were waived during the pandemic, access to telehealth will fall off a cliff.

As we move on from the 2020 presidential election, now is the time for policymakers to take action to ensure Americans continue to have access to virtual care when and where they need it, particularly to help solve for health disparities among rural and underserved communities. n

• While telehealth did not cause the inequities in our healthcare system, many of

Ann Mond Johnson, CEO, The American Telemedicine Association

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The Tech That’s Helping Healthcare Providers Simplify Their Patient Experience Cutting-edge healthcare digitization initiatives can help increase value and provide improved experiences for patients and clinicians.

A unified patient experience, or a digital front door, can empower patients with more access and control in their healthcare experience.

“Even before COVID-19, many CEOs had their teams focusing on implementing a digital front door for their patients,” says Lisa Esch, senior vice president of provider industry solutions for NTT DATA Services, an IT services company. “The pandemic has accelerated that quest and expanded it. They’re now looking beyond digital front door solutions toward fully integrated experiences.”

She continues, “Companies need solutions that allow for scalable and flexible care-from-anywhere capabilities. The market is reshaping around these new models and the digitization of healthcare.”

Integrations include single sign-on, enhanced security, cloud, analytics, and orchestration between patient and clinical journeys as well as capabilities that allow for work and care from anywhere in a secure environment.

One cutting-edge healthcare digitization solution — Nucleus for Healthcare, offered by NTT DATA — can help health systems transform their patient engagement and re-engagement strategy. It is a full-service, integrated digital health model that creates a seamless unified experience.

Meeting accelerated needs NTT DATA has been busy during the pandemic, including serving over 30 major health systems across the United States, which includes over half a million employees at over 500 hospitals and 4,000 other care sites.

“We run the technology for these hospitals, data centers, [and] host applications, and provide technical service desk and clinical service desk support,” says Esch. “Our most important job was

and still is to keep them running and to answer the phones when doctors, nurses, and other care team members need help accessing the lifesaving and care-tracking technology that power the healthcare system.”

She says COVID-19 has accelerated the need for complex digital technologies that allow businesses and societies to continue to function, with more tasks automated or carried out remotely.

“Things that used to take days, or weeks, or months, we started doing in minutes and hours,” says Esch, noting the company’s goal is to provide clients confidence in this new digital future.

Digital solutions Long before COVID-19, NTT DATA was already working on digital solutions.

Eighteen months ago, they focused on creating end-to-end patient and end-to-end clinician journeys.

Now they’re working to create a permanent and industrialized shift to virtual care. That includes enabling

remote patient care, remote patient monitoring, and remote collaboration through secure, compliant, scalable, and intuitive capabilities.

The provider industry needs topline and bottom-line solutions while operating securely in this new normal. Operational recovery depends on industrialization of new models such as “Work from Anywhere” as well as “Care from Anywhere” models.

“It requires achieving significant cost take-out through new distributed delivery models which transcend geography and can be engaged quickly as conditions change,” says Esch.

This shift to virtual care also requires adoption of at-scale models that integrate capabilities across the value chain, including scheduling, care coordination, and supporting patients and clinicians on using new virtual tools. Other requirements include a deep knowledge of consumers and their ability to pay, as well as their payment preferences, and need for financial assistance.

Esch says, “Innovation is not always inventing things within your own organization, it’s taking advantage of capabilities developed by others. When you have a tried and trusted data platform such as Nucleus, you can proceed much faster. Data is at the heart of all new innovations.”

While new ideas, new applications, and new tools can take months to get up and run, NTT DATA can help simplify the process. “Our accelerators and platform can reduce the time to stand up new applications that directly improve patent engagement, retention, and outcomes,” she says. n Kristen Castillo

Learn more on how NTT DATA Services can help you improve patient and clinician experiences and improve value and costs at nttdataservices.com/healthcare.

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Journey to Becoming a Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology Nurse Each person’s journey to becoming a pediatric hematology/oncology nurse differs. Though it can be difficult, the career is mostly fulfilling. Here are the perspectives of three nurses who found their way into the calling.

O

ne can start off as a childhood goal, a second career, or even from another specialty. Whichever way, it becomes a passion and a calling. Many people assume the job is depressing, though. Certainly, it can happen, but most of the time, it’s a job that fulfills and makes us feel honored to be part of the care team.

Erin Friedman, BSN, RN, CPHON Being a pediatric oncology nurse is more than just a career, it’s an honor. I always knew I wanted to “take care of people” when I grew up. When I grew up, I applied to be a volunteer in my city’s children’s hospital.

While painting faces one afternoon, a small girl, with no hair, bounced up to me and asked if I would paint people on her knees so that when she danced, they’d dance with her. She was a dynamic girl with rhabdomyosarcoma. I quickly became friends with her and her family. Despite months of treatment, she entered hospice. While dying, she asked me if I would become her nurse one day, and the obvious answer was yes. The rest is history.

Robin Pitts, RN, MN, CFNP, CPHON I did not want to be a nurse. I wanted to do autopsies and determine cause of death. One day, I volunteered to

shadow a pathologist, observed an autopsy, and determined my career path needed to change — immediately.

My primary focus is patients with sickle cell disease. Sickle cell is an invisible chronic illness; patients may appear unaffected, but their own body is working against them — unexpected pain, multi-organ damage, and chronic anemia. Caring for these patients motivated me to obtain my master’s degree in nursing and then become a family nurse practitioner. I love what I do and whom I do it for.

Micah A. Skeens, PhD, RN, CPNP More than 20 years after deciding on this career, I have no regrets. Now a nurse scientist, my research is dedicated to improving outcomes for transplant patients.

My career is still very much committed to those exceptional children and families. Bone marrow transplant is “different,” they told me. It’s “intense,” the kids “go through a lot,” or “you get attached.” The reality is: there were reasons my heart was drawn to it. Though hard, I learned a lot from my patients.

They were resilient and inspiring. They molded me into a researcher committed to making their experience better. n Joan O’Hanlon Curry, MS, RN, CPNP, CPON

Three Things to Know About Digital Health Telehealth has provided more convenience, especially during the ongoing pandemic. Learn more about how you can take control of your health.

Thanks to smartphones, telehealth medical care is in the palm of everyone’s hands now. It’s easier than ever to find medical information and schedule an appointment online. But how can anyone know that the information and care they’re getting is what they really need? We asked the American Heart Association about effectively navigating digital health information and telehealth. Here are three ways anyone can be more in control of their own health.

Know the risk factors An American has a heart attack or stroke every 40 6

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seconds. Further, half of American adults have high blood pressure, but only 1 in 4 has it under control.

So how can anyone know if they are at risk of being one of these people? An appointment with a primary healthcare provider is a good start. Telehealth makes it easy to discuss health and agree on any needed tests to identify individual risk factors.

Be an advocate Knowing risk factors is a good start; now, speak up.

Healthcare providers want to know if their patients need more help, so mention any challenges during your next telehealth call. Even during a pandemic, families can help each other by focusing on improving health, preparing healthy meals at home, taking walks, and playing active games. Digital health information and apps can help provide guidance, recipes, and tracking.

Seek trustworthy sources The internet seems to be overflowing with health information, and it’s hard to know who to trust.

The American Heart Association has defined ideal cardiovascular health based on seven risk factors, Life’s Simple 7, that people can improve through lifestyle changes: smoking status, physical activity, diet, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose.

The American Heart Association provides My Life Check, a free digital health assessment tool that gives a personalized heart health score based on individual information. It scores each of the Life’s Simple 7 categories and provides science-based education, videos, and ideas for monitoring and improving heart health status. n Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., MPH, Chief Medical Officer for Prevention, American Heart Association MEDIAPLANET

How AI Is Helping Shape the Future of Healthcare

Consumerism Is Coming to Clinical Trials We have a perfectly designed $3.7 trillion healthcare system. It’s perfectly designed to deliver more healthcare, not health. But what is it that people want? More health.

The system is broken, yet we’re finding ways to fix it. Today, I believe we’re at an inflection point. During the pandemic, we’ve seen the acceleration of telehealth, home care, and many other improvements.

Clinical trials, which have evolved little in the past century, are experiencing a new wave of consumerism with a focus on comfort, convenience, confidentiality, and care.

The democratization of the architecture of clinical trials means everyone with a smartphone can be a researcher. The future of data collection will be largely on the edge, leveraging video, chat, voice, and pictures, giving a 360-degree view of health.

Finally, progress does not have to come to the detriment of privacy.

Through technologies like edge AI, federated learning, and zero-trust infrastructure, we can preserve privacy by sharing data in limited ways and the clinical learnings more broadly. The next challenge is how we engage and retain those patients at scale and low cost to transform research and care.

Nirav R. Shah, M.D., MPH, Chief Medical Officer, doc.ai

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Artificial intelligence represents the next step in improving healthcare for all. But it will take a bit of work.

Unlike other medical technologies, AI represents an active participant in the patient experience.

AI will provide a data-based opinion to influence and automate the decisions of the healthcare professionals involved.

AI for providers: medical imaging Michael Recht, chair of radiology at NYU Langone, is spearheading a partnership between NYU Langone and Facebook’s AI research group.

The goal of this partnership is to reduce the time it takes to conduct an MRI by a factor of 10. The project, called FastMRI, could enable MRIs to replace x-rays, avoiding radiation exposure and increasing a provider’s visibility into what ails a patient earlier in the process.

AI for pharma: drug discovery Michael Frank, director of R&D strategy within Pfizer’s Worldwide

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R&D Group, helps Pfizer leverage machine learning (ML) to accelerate drug discovery. On average, it takes 14 years and $1.6 billion to develop a new drug, with just a 10 percent success rate after entering human clinical trials.

When ML is applied to the process, it simulates and predicts the binding affinity and potency of certain compound combinations, making the process of discovering a new drug 10 times faster. Treatments take less time to get to market and at a fraction of the cost.

AI for payers: waste reduction The Institute of Medicine estimates the United States wastes $1 trillion each year on healthcare spending — one-third of what it spends.

Mark Kanner, lead data scientist at Aetna, focuses on how AI can reduce the errors, fraud, and abuse that result in that wasted money.

With 39 million members and 5,700 hospitals representing 1.2 million healthcare professionals in Aetna’s network, the volume of claims data is significant.

Beyond the sheer volume, there’s structured and unstructured data in varying formats, and all of it requires millisecond-to-millisecond analysis.

It’s easy to imagine how certainty of which claims should be paid, and in what amounts, within such a complex system is difficult to come by. Data scientists like Kanner are using this trove of data to train ML models that can recognize if a claim should be paid as requested.

A word of caution AI bias is real, and it happens when the training data fed to a ML model accidentally provides the AI with a biased view of the world.

Since the stakes of any new medical technology are patient lives, healthcare professionals must take great care to build “explainable AI” to avoid handing over the reins of the caregiving kingdom to a collection of biased, and potentially fatal, machines. n Michael Weiss, Co-Founder, Ai4 Healthcare

3 Ways Telehealth Continues to Expand in Reach and Effectiveness Though telehealth has already improved our access to healthcare, here are a few ways we can continue this positive trend.

Spurred by the pandemic, telehealth has broken down the traditional walls of the exam room to connect patients and physicians safely and effectively. Its adoption has been further aided by sweeping changes implemented by Medicare, individual states, and private insurance companies.

Widespread adoption of telehealth Technological improvements such as remote patient monitoring — combined with the need to maintain physical distancing — have spurred explosive growth in telehealth usage.

AMA research shows that the percentage of physicians utilizing telehealth visits jumped from 14 percent to 28 percent

between 2016 and 2019. But, beginning in March, estimates spiked to somewhere between 60 percent and 90 percent.

This fundamental change in how physicians deliver care, and how patients experience it, bodes well for the future. Moving forward, we will need physician leaders, government, and health organizations working collaboratively to ensure that challenges of efficacy, privacy, and equity do not impede growth.

It’s an effective tool Telehealth is an incredibly powerful tool in caring for patients with various forms of chronic disease, the treatment of which absorbs nearly 90 percent of U.S. healthcare spending.

In addition, telehealth is invaluable in preventive care and in treating acute conditions like COVID-19, particularly as it keeps patients from exposing others to the virus. The potential of telehealth can be trans-

Does Your Current EMR Do the Job? The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that the United States has a way to go in achieving effective and efficient data collection, sharing, and analysis.

formative, but significant work remains to ensure all who need it can gain access.

Readily available strategies and methods to boost telehealth The AMA continues to assemble a broad range of resources designed to help physicians maintain continuity of care in the face of pandemic-related challenges.

Continuity of care is an essential consideration for all patients, but it is particularly important in treating those dealing with multiple conditions who may be taking several medications.

The AMA’s newly released Telehealth Implementation Playbook, available for free on their website, outlines a clear efficient path to rapid, scaled implementation of audio and visual visits, along with a wealth of institutional knowledge and best practices curated from experts in the field. n Susan R. Bailey, M.D., President, American Medical Association

Now more than ever, hospitals must be excellent stewards of their data, using state-of-the-art methods to collect, view, store, exchange, aggregate, and analyze information in the most compliant, effective, and efficient manner.

Most hospitals agree on the importance of updating and improving their EMR. They usually migrate about three years of data but tend to overlook the legacy data that did not get converted — much of which should be maintained in discrete formats, rather than just PDF documents. Patient records, radiological images, labs, and insurance claims all need to be reliable and accessible in an active legacy archive.

An active archive is important at the point-of-care. It is also integral to successful legal and compliance audits.

Hospitals can help by shoring up their own data with EMRs and active legacy archives. After all, healthier data helps ensure healthier hospitals and healthier patients.

Kel Pults, DHA, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, MediQuant

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Health Citizenship in America: How Connectivity Bolsters Health Besides the financial burden, the pandemic has caused additional surprises to American wellbeing.

Within days of the pandemic, U.S. consumers were hoarding food and hand sanitizer. But the pandemic also pushed us, collectively, to meet other human needs, compelling us to connect in three ways: digitally, socially, and civically. As the number of cases grew, the crisis revealed weaknesses in healthcare.

By April, Americans learned how social determinants of health were determining survival rates for COVID19. On April 7, Trump asked, “Why is it three or four times more so for the Black community as opposed to other people?” The combined crises of the pandemic and the risks of living with lower socioeconomic status diminished patients’ health outcomes.

A Panel of Experts Talks About the State of Healthcare

Karly Rowe Vice President of Patient Access, Identity, and Care Management, Experian

Abbas Mooraj Managing Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences, Cloudera

Mark Brandenhoff General Manager of Healthcare, Ergotron

What are social determinants of health?

“Social determinants of health” points to early childhood, work, food, and transportation as basic factors underpinning wellbeing.

Now, we must add another factor: digital connectivity. If one couldn’t work from home, then that worker was unemployed. For people who could work from home, having a reliable internet connection was the next problem.

The second form of vital connection is social. Growing anxiety and stress have become mainstream public health impacts. Isolation and loneliness have motivated many people to connect to others digitally through Zoom.

A third form emerged with the death of George Floyd. The pandemic converged with a social justice crisis.

This energized a connection for civic concerns. People have been coming together: protesting in person, attending virtual gatherings, and obtaining ballots for the elections.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Health Economist

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We ask the industry’s top healthcare experts on what they think the biggest obstacle facing the industry today is and how we can overcome it.

KR: Many healthcare organizations struggle to balance day-to-day operations with the need to innovate for the future. These two are often at odds with each other in budget and resources.

The pandemic, however, has quickly accelerated the adoption of tools, putting additional strain on healthcare organizations already stretched thin as a result of the pandemic.

Healthcare organizations are looking to reduce complexities of their systems using quick-toimplement and easy-to-use solutions. Companies need to focus on a holistic approach that solves for a number of challenges, rather than a single need.

AM: Speed, agility, resiliency, and accuracy are more crucial than ever, and the stakes are incredibly high. There are technologies the healthcare ecosystem has spent years adopting, including electronic health records. Newer technologies are being developed at a rapid clip to solve issues with data quality, data curation, governance, and lineage.

Democratizing data so that business decisions can be made in real time is essential, but it must be secure and governed. At the same time, adoption of the best healthcare services, which improve health outcomes and decrease costs, needs to increase. This can only happen if they are developed on consumer-friendly digital platforms.

The organizations I’ve talked to have achieved this with a cloud-based, multi-function data analytics platform fulfilling the criteria.

MB: We need an elevated level of health and safety for both staff and patients. While health and safety for both is always the industry’s greatest priority, it is amplified in a way not yet seen in modern healthcare due to the pandemic. Ensuring adequate safety measures are steadfast for both staff and patients is an obstacle those in the industry face day in and day out.

Utilizing technology that reduces exposure to pathogens, such as COVID-19, is a crucial component to overcoming the obstacle of elevated health and safety within facilities. Adopting these new tools and technologies that work hand-inhand with current procedures sets up staff and patients for long-term, holistic wellbeing. n MEDIAPLANET

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