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IT in healthcare has proven to be a disruptive force. Over the years, advancements in technology have grown at an exponential rate, driving enormous value for providers and patients in India. Healthcare solutions, technology and consulting from IT organisations are enabling the healthcare industry to achieve greater efficiency within their operations; collaborate to improve outcomes; and integrate with new partners for a more sustainable, personalised and patient-centric system focused on value.
The healthcare ecosystem is the convergence of otherwise separate entities, such as life sciences organisations, providers and payers, as well as social and government agencies. This convergence, along with enhanced connectivity and mobility, has resulted in a tremendous surge in healthcare related data that can provide insights and inform actions.
Data is growing and moving faster than healthcare organisations can consume it. Researchers estimate that health information is doubling every five years, and 80 per cent of medical data is unstructured but clinically relevant. This data resides in a variety of places like lab and imaging systems, physician notes, medical correspondence, online portals and social media communities, insurance claims, CRM systems and finance.
Healthcare challenges in India, such as providing care to an increasing population, patients residing in remote locations, chronic illnesses and revolutionary but expensive treatments, are burdening the healthcare and pharma system in place. The massive amounts of data and ever expanding treatment options are making it difficult to balance patient care with controlling operational costs. Additionally, market forces and policy reforms around the world are putting pressure on health systems to provide better health outcomes to more patients – at a lower cost.
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Vamsicharan Mudiam
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A way to accomplish this is to make better use of health information and mine it for new insight. The combination of mobile, cloud and Big Data technologies are making a mobile health ecosystem possible while putting the patient centre-stage. Coupling the power of mobile devices and cloud technologies, based on open standards, is enabling health systems around the world to awaken to an entirely new way of delivering health services more efficiently. For example: In the current healthcare scenario, one can visit four hospitals and receive four different courses of action. Hospitals need help amalgamating treatment data, tracking outliers, assessing risks and applying financial analysis to procedures and processes. Big Data analytics helps hospitals analyse patients’ data and standardise the way to deal with medical issues. It is known as evidence-based medicine and is enabling hospitals to better predict disease risk, improve medication adherence, and take pre-emptive measures before patient’s condition deteriorates.
A new wave of healthcare professionals who prefer to work with mobile devices parallel an increasing number of consumers using mobile apps to monitor their own personal health. The healthcare providers can now take a mobile-first approach to drive increased efficiency and most importantly, deliver better patient care. By combining smart phone features with relevant data on the go, an ecosystem of healthcare providers, partners, vendors, patients and clinicians can quickly, easily and securely share authorised images, patient health information, test results and any other necessary medical information.
Cloud technologies are enabling hospitals and pharma companies to adopt systems for a mobile audience and provide avenues to tap into critical data from anywhere, at any time and any device. All this while keeping operational and capital expenditure outlays to the minimum and providing a back-up resource to scale operations up or down as and when required. For instance, pharma companies often encounter seasonal peaks and troughs in their business. The “pay-as-you-go” cost structure of the cloud model help organisations align their IT needs according to the demands of the business.
In a mobile/ cloud-centric health ecosystem, geography will no longer present an obstacle to deliver diagnosis or even treatment. The constraints of physical location and the high costs of maintaining hospital facilities will be eventually mitigated. Instead, care will be moved into whatever location that best suits the patients and their circumstances, be home, office or primary care environment.
The private-sector health IT industry has aggressively invested billions of dollars in new technologies, using advances in cloud computing, big-data analytics, and natural-language processing to create advanced and sophisticated systems that turn a “data deluge” into insights leading to better care for patients. Communities that transform their healthcare system with ambition, vision and innovation will outperform and attract new businesses, jobs and foster economic development. These communities have the opportunity to leapfrog their peers while encouraging care that promotes access, lowers costs and increases quality.
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