Technology Enables Healthcare Transformation

Digital innovations are helping to rapidly transform modern sectors. Healthcare providers delivering services in hospitals and health systems are using these tools to improve the health of populations and individual patients, reduce costs, and provide greater comfort to service recipients.

Healthcare providers today have more technologies to choose from that facilitate rationale-based care, and new systems allow them to engage patients in the treatment process, resulting in a better experience for the recipients of services as well as the provider itself. The technology in question is part of a revolution that is changing the entire sector today, moving it towards a value-based system and better integration and collaboration across different areas of healthcare.

The future of healthcare will revolve around improving patient-centric care models. Health care delivery strategies are increasingly less focused on quantitative data and fee-for-service billing, and in their place is a value-based care model that motivates the pursuit of good patient outcomes.

Healthcare organizations will need more streamlined data management, more widespread interoperability, and better ways to measure performance as they look to reduce healthcare costs, identify possible improvements, and shape their internal structure to deliver superior service.

Why the healthcare sector needs to change

The healthcare industry is facing a variety of challenges including restrictive regulations, privacy and rapidly rising costs – yet healthcare professionals are already reaping the benefits of a revolution that is completely changing the face of the industry. Among the changes taking place are:

• Modernization of medical IT systems toward more centralized and connected enterprise-class IT infrastructures that facilitate more efficient data management, interoperability and integration of medical systems.
• Better connectivity of clinical devices that allows medical staff to work faster and more efficiently, which means more time for the patient and lower healthcare costs.

In addition to these changes, it’s also worth mentioning revolutionary innovations in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics tools that allow large amounts of healthcare data to be scanned and organized at lightning speed, so the team taking care of a patient can get their medical records faster.

The combination of clinical and enterprise AI networks will help improve the interoperability of healthcare solutions and provide organizations with additional tools to help the team perform fewer routine administrative tasks to gain more time for the patient.

Digital transformation in healthcare

The evolutionary process of how and when healthcare professionals use technology can be broken down into three stages – digitization, disruption and transformation. Digitization is the introduction of digital solutions that assist in the delivery of routine healthcare processes or services.

Examples of how digitization has changed various medical services include CT and MRI scans, for example. The revolution has also extended to administrative tasks such as billing, which has been automated through the use of digital tools. Above all, however, digitization has made it easier to store, view and share data.

Breakthroughs are occurring through the use of newer technologies such as artificial intelligence, mobile technologies, analytics tools, and the cloud that are changing the way people, organizations, and countries interact with each other. Such disruptive, innovative solutions provide unprecedented ease of communication to make the system more consumer-centric.

As healthcare continues to evolve, health systems will become more tightly integrated, and digitization will connect functions and processes between disparate businesses that were previously separate. Advances in electronic health records and other solutions are allowing payers, providers and other organizations in the healthcare sector to collaborate more extensively across healthcare services.

The healthcare sector is undergoing a digital transformation that will completely change the way payers, providers and others serve and interact with patients, customers and stakeholders. Healthcare, which used to be based on independent services, is now moving towards an integrated ecosystem where healthcare professionals can solve the problems they encounter on a broader scale without losing sight of the key role of the patient and providing valuable care.

Healthcare transformation and a value-based system

To successfully implement a value-based care system, healthcare organizations need more accurate, precise information and better data management. The good news is that there are many ways to leverage data and technology for the healthcare sector to make decisions, as there are many massive medical, genomic, population health, and outcomes data sets available.

Analytics tools and AI-based solutions allow these vast amounts of information to be mined and extract meaningful insights that healthcare providers, hospitals, health system managers and caregivers can use in innovative ways. Artificial intelligence (AI) and interoperable systems are designed to help organizations draw actionable insights that will help provide more valuable care to patients.