In this blog post
Modernizing Healthcare Products for Experience-driven Care
Since the beginning of the pandemic, healthcare has pushed beyond the boundaries of any single technology to deliver uninterrupted patient care. Across the globe, healthcare organizations leveraged technology to meet the needs that surged due to the pandemic.
Going forward, technology will continue to transform how patients access care facilities, and how providers deliver it. Telehealth has moved mainstream and the modernization of healthcare technology products has gained prominence. According to Frost & Sullivan, the telehealth market in the United States is predicted to see a seven-fold growth by 2025. It is also reported that telehealth visits will continue to have a steep rise, creating a new modality of care.
To enable the new ways of care delivery and with increasing focus on value-based care, healthcare product modernization is receiving a lot of attention. Among several other benefits, this will primarily free up provider bandwidth for quality time with their patients and other consumers.
GAVS invited two industry stalwarts as panelists to a webinar earlier this year to explore deeper into this topic. Mr. Rajeev Purohit and Mr. Pete Goutmann engaged in an insightful conversation with Mr. Balaji Uppili discussing the various aspects of modernizing healthcare products to deliver experience-driven care. This blog captures some of the key discussion points and takeaways from the webinar. The link to the entire webinar is available at the end of the blog.
The first panelist, Mr. Rajeev Purohit, is the Executive Director – Engineering, Collector Program, Athena Health (India). With over 20 years of experience, Mr. Rajeev has experience delivering large-scale software deployments to enterprises worldwide. Currently, he is leading the flagship product of Athena Health that is focused on healthcare revenue cycle management.
Mr. Pete Goutmann has over 30 years of experience in pre-hospital healthcare and is currently the Senior Director (Research and Development) of Patient Care at Zoll Data Systems. He is a long-term advocate of partnering with offshore engineering companies.
Healthcare Today and Tomorrow
Healthcare has moved from being a paper-based system – as billions of data started to accumulate, to digital mode. What took 8-10 man-hours to filter and conclude takes minutes, thanks to advancements in big data technologies, AI-led advanced analytics, and the like. With over 70 billion medical records available in the U.S., efficiency and continuity are of the essence to improve healthcare workflow.
As the industry moves from fee-for-service to outcome-based medicine, data collection, cleansing, and analysis are of utmost importance for data-driven insights & decision making. The modernization of healthcare products needs to facilitate a significant shift towards patient-centric care, focusing on the following needs:
- Automation of Quality Assurance (QA) processes in a quick timeframe
- Succinct reports generation through AI-based data analysis and medical coding practice
- Information architecture based on user journey through automated data collection
- Data analysis that focuses on predictable outcomes
- Scalability while meeting various global regulations
Key Aspects of Healthcare Product Modernization
When it comes to the modernization of healthcare products, technology players are focused on three main aspects – migration to the cloud for better patient serviceability, upgrading the technology stack for efficiency, and automation of processes for scalability.
Moving from a monolithic approach to a holistic approach, modernization is all about connecting various tech products to a unified data source that can be accessed for quick and quality care to patients.
With several data collection methods available, including speech, image capture, remote device data, there is also a rising risk of security issues. Security has always remained an area of concern in the healthcare industry. With more and more security attacks targeting healthcare, companies are focusing on adopting stringent CI/CD pipelines to meet security and quality standards. Regulatory bodies and federal establishments have imposed strict measures that ensure the protection of patient data. As a result, technology companies focusing on new services such as telehealth must comply with these standards before launching any new product.
Increasing Use of AI and ML in Healthcare Products
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are driving healthcare product modernization on a large scale. With scalability being one of the driving forces of healthcare products, different areas such as quality assurance, data analysis, medical coding practices are beginning to rely on AI and ML. As hospitals take on a more mobile-centric approach, the role of AI and ML in areas such as diagnostics contributes to the following benefits in the healthcare industry:
- Quality of care
- Patient outcomes
- Decreasing costs for healthcare players
- Better analysis of data
AI and ML also play a significant role in post-hospitalization care. EMS care launched post-discharge mobile units that allow doctors to cater to patients without revisiting the hospital. Similarly, Microsoft is investing in ‘Project Hanover’ focused on machine reading to accelerate precision medicine. Their ideology is to develop a framework that incorporates diverse forms of indirect supervision by combining deep learning with probabilistic logic.
This is only a high-level gist of the webinar. You can watch the entire webinar including the poll questions and listen to the experts take on audience questions here.
GAVS routinely organizes insightful webinars with GAVS’ tech leaders, the leadership team, and industry thought leaders to explore current and emerging trends. To watch all our webinar recordings, please visit https://www.gavstech.com/videos/.
