Category: Insights

Big data is the buzzword today. It is heard everywhere, especially in the healthcare industry. Traditionally, the huge amount of data generated by the healthcare industry was stored as hard copy. This data has the capability to support a wide range of healthcare and medical functions. The digitization of such data is called Big Data. The entirety of data that is related to patient health care and well-being makes up big data. A 2011 McKinsey report estimated that the health care industry could potentially realize $300 billion in annual value by leveraging big data.

The wide diversity of big data and the pace at which it is managed makes it overwhelming. It includes clinical data from CPOE and clinical decision support systems (physicians written notes and prescriptions, medical imaging, laboratory, pharmacy, insurance, and other administrative data); patient data in electronic patient records (EPRs); machine generated/sensor data, such as from monitoring vital signs; social media posts, including Twitter feeds (so-called tweets), blogs, status updates on Facebook and other platforms, and web pages; and less patient-specific information, including emergency care data, news feeds, and articles in medical journals.

Big data is very useful in the healthcare industry. Over the past decade, electronic health records (EHR) have been widely adopted in hospitals and clinics worldwide. Important clinical knowledge and a deeper understanding of patient disease patterns can be studied from such data. It will help to improve patient care and improve efficiency.
There are few targeted applications of big data, such as

Healthcare Data solutions

With the help of big data, the vast amount of data can be stored systematically. Now doctors and other healthcare practitioners can make informed decisions as they have access to a wide range of data. Of course, the data generated will grow by leaps and bounds, and newer systems will be able to process it quickly and cost effectively.

Big data to fight cancer

Cancer is rapidly crippling people across the world. Big data can help to fight cancer more effectively. Healthcare providers will have enhanced ability to detect and diagnose diseases in their early stages, assigning more effectual therapies based on a patient’s genetic makeup, and regulate drug doses to minimize side effects and improve effectiveness. It will also provide great support for parallelization and help in mapping the 3 billion DNA base pairs.

Monitoring patient vitals

The application of big data makes it easier for hospital staff to work more efficiently. Sensors are used besides patient beds to continuously monitor blood pressure, heartbeat and respiratory rate. Any change in pattern is quickly alerted to doctors and healthcare administrators.

Smoother Hospital Administration

Healthcare administration becomes much smoother with the help of big data. It helps to reduce the cost of care measurement, provide the best clinical support, and manage the population of at-risk patients. It also helps medical experts analyze data from diverse sources. It helps healthcare providers conclude the deviations among patients and the effects treatments have on their health.

Healthcare Intelligence

Big Data can be used for healthcare Intelligence application. This will help hospitals, payers and healthcare agencies augment their competitive advantages by developing smart business solutions.

Fraud Prevention and Detection

Big data helps to prevent a wide range of errors on the side of health administrators in the form of wrong dosage, wrong medicines, and other human errors. It will also be particularly useful to insurance companies. They can prevent a wide range of fraudulent claims of insurance.

Today many doctors are using technology to improve patient engagement. This in fact means involving the patient in his or her own care. Most doctors and healthcare professionals have realized that involving the patient is leading to improved health, patient satisfaction and reduced costs. Thus better outcome for all the parties involved. It also helps to improve productivity for the practice. In addition, technology is being used for the purpose.

Patient Engagement

When the patients are active participants in their own health plan, they receive quality and safer care without errors. Most patients are careless in taking their medications. They do not adhere to the prescribed treatment and discontinue the medication once they seem to feel a little better. A true patient engagement would involve following the actual treatment protocol. This also makes it easier for better patient partnership in decision making.

Use Of Technology

Smart Phones

The technological advancement in communication can be adapted to boost patient engagement in healthcare industry. Today people are very savvy with the use of mobile phones and tablets or computers. It is a safe repository and communication tool that can be used for sending or receiving reminders for precautionary or follow-up care, receiving patient questions and requests, scheduling or changing appointments, sending patients education materials, etc. The lab tests result scan be received online and can be shared with doctors without having to make multiple visits to the lab.

EHR’s

The EHR or electronic health records can be leveraged properly so that doctors have a better interaction with patients in the examination room. Radiology, laboratory, and medical devices are internally interfaced with the EHR of the patient. It also allows the doctor to import results of the examination into the patient’s portal that can be checked by the patient anytime.

Saves Examination Time

Visual display of data in the examination rooms by the doctor helps the patient in understanding his health better. Medical history, scanned images, BMI graphs, prescriptions etc can be checked at one portal. It also helps to keep track of his improving health. The doctor too saves a great amount of time while examination as he has each patient record and information at his touch. It decreases chances of misplaced or lost medical record papers, medical history, and prescriptions.

Technology and education thus involves the patient himself in decision making regarding his health problems rather than just the physician taking the decision. They are now provided with the option of choosing the treatment based on their perspective and unique values. Today patients make use of smart phones and wearable to proactively manage their health in a comparatively better way. These devices track the overall patient’s physical activities and their symptoms and record them. It can be incorporated into EHR for better evaluation.

The use of technology helps to instill efficiency and effectiveness in workplace. It helps to boost up profitability of the practice. Improved engagement is seeing results in many healthcare facilities by reducing overall healthcare costs. Today more and more hospitals and health care facilities are adopting a wide range of technology and communication tools to keep track of patient’s information and communicate with them, with the motive of increasing patient engagement.

Healthcare industry is coming up with novel ideas so as to meet the needs of the people in their busy lives. With advancing technology, the idea of consulting a doctor through mobile app is the latest in the league.

Introduction to Mobile Apps

Mobile apps can enable people to seek virtual medical help just through a Smartphone from anywhere in the world without actually visiting the doctor. The technology basically exploits artificial intelligence to consult healthcare specialists.

Features

This mobile device or the smart phone just acts as an interface between a patient and a doctor, where the artificially intelligent doctor keeps track of the patient’s medical records, habits, diet and what not. The mobile app also features the user to video conference with doctors employed by the company. Amongst the other services provided to the user which includes health monitoring facility, booking of appointments as well as ordering of medical tests, the mobile app also allows its user to video conference with doctors employed by the company. Thus the major features of this kind of mobile app are easy access to patient’s health data, convenient medical appointment with specialists as well as remote health monitoring of patients.

Digitization: A boon to Healthcare Industry

Many new start-ups are hiring high-end scientists as well as software engineers so as to develop a virtual arrangement which would fulfill the various needs of its patients. A UK based healthcare start-up Babylon Health is putting in huge investments in order to develop a highly specialized and customized mobile app, where in numerous of its registered users will be provided with a variety of health services. About 60 companies and various health insurance providers have partnered with Babylon so as to offer employee health plans. Once the user speaks into a phone, the computer puts forward several questions related to the illness, its symptoms and then accordingly the course of treatment is determined. Digitization of healthcare industry has promoted various players to introduce a number of smart apps in the digital world. This innovation in healthcare industry is a big boon in disguise and surely has a brighter future for patients.

Digitization of Healthcare with Attune

Attune Technologies has been at the forefront of the digitization of healthcare with its innovative solutions to help patients and healthcare providers connect better. Most recently, we launched Attune Mobility Solutions – a suite of apps designed by doctors and developed by experts to create seamless communication, offering timely inputs for better patient care. It allows different groups of health workers such as nutritionists, physiotherapists, staff and ward nurses to integrate on a single platform, giving doctors a complete picture. Improved collaboration and real time diagnostics with specialized alerts for emergencies ensure that the patient is well taken care of.

There are several challenges that medical practitioners face on a daily basis trying to run a successful and effective clinical practice. The key ones being the need to increase revenue reduce cost and improve operational efficiency without compromising on quality patient care.

The Attune Practice Management System has been designed by practicing doctors who understand the challenges of medical practice.

Here we look at the top 9 benefits of Practice Management System:

Follow your progress-anytime anywhere

Track performance on a regular basis to create better business strategies. Evaluate your clinics performance on a daily basis on a single screen which allows you to detect issues immediately and resolve them before they escalate. This tool helps you to implement new actions, analyze your true potential so as to increase profitability and boost productivity.

Save time

The simple intuitive patient dashboard allows quick access to medical details and patient history. View key vital trends, treatment plans and test reports on a single screen and get critical information at a glance. A strong practice management system will have an efficient registration process, wherein unique patient id and visit id is created for every instant visit registration so as to ensure that more patients are treated within the same given time, thus generating greater revenue.

Get more referrals

Providing state of the art service to the patient results in increased patient satisfaction, which in turn leads to repeated visits and confidence in your care. This also brings in new patients through referrals and a positive “word of mouth”.

Increase Revenue

The powerful MIS dashboard allows easy access to financial, operational, inventory, clinical and treatment based reports available in custom formats. Track the metrics most important for your business and accordingly simulate strategies to maximize revenues.

Eliminate pilferage

Attunes advanced inventory modules allows you to manage logistics efficiently and helps automate purchase based on concepts such as predictive reordering and expiration alerts. Thus you can put an end to pilferage, resource wastage and unnecessary costs.

Automate resource allocation

Resource allocation for every procedure can be automated with the predefined and custom defined treatment kits. The ambiguity over material wastage can now be totally avoided as this tool helps in maintaining schedules and track inventor in the course of the treatment.

Improve the overall operational efficiency

Attunes calendar facilitates scheduling rescheduling and easy tracking of patients appointments by the consultant or the treatment center. Appointment confirmations are automatically updated with the additional auto e-mail confirmation tool. The overall operational efficiency of the clinic can be improved with this efficient and fastest scheduling tool.

Flexible payment system

The maximum complications arise in the payment and billing section. Attunes robust billing module handles large number of patients efficiently by minimizing delays and reducing the time taken to settle the bill. Further, mapping different insurance clients for credit customers eliminates confusion and error in billing, making it easier for cashier to handle the complexities.

Get the cloud advantage

It’s on cloud. Thus there is no need for expensive servers, hardware or additional resources. All you need is a PC and internet to get automated.

Information Technology, which is largely (and rightly so) touted to improve healthcare comes with its own challenges, which has made the progress rather sluggish, and adoption low. Overcoming these challenges or working out alternate solutions is imperative for the better functionality of healthcare technologies and IT systems

Investment in HealthCare IT

Transiting to value-based reimbursement model – Better known as P4P or Pay for Performance, demands healthcare providers to meet certain performance measures for quality and efficiency. Healthcare IT can prove hugely beneficial in this case as hospitals always look for ways to be cost and care-efficient. The major challenge arises when senior management doesn’t quite appreciate the worth of investments in IT and Software to support this change

Reimbursements or Lower Compensations

Telemedicine can prove as a boon in case of huge cost reduction and far greater penetration of health services. According to a study by Towers Watson, an annual savings of $6 billion could accrue in healthcare costs if all currently deployed tele health applications could replace physician, emergency department, and urgent care visits. However, a major challenge to its successful implementation is that of reimbursement. A sizeable proportion of people who provide telemedicine services are either not reimbursed at all or receive lower compensation from care companies for telemedicine compared to in-person care.

Interoperability of IT systems

Another major challenge that needs to be overcome in order to drive adoption is the Interoperability of IT systems. EHRs maintained by separate providers are often disparate databases that either have little or no connection at all. This inhibits their potential to a greater extent of providing an integrated information repository of each patient that can be put to various primary and secondary uses, such as quality improvement. The lack of standardized reporting systems also contributes to the problem of decision making in the time of treatments.

These are the major challenges impacting the Healthcare IT industry in today’s world.

Source

https://www.foley.com/2014-telemedicine-survey-executive-summary/