The Healthcare sector generates a vast amount of data every year. Computer systems are used to manage the said data. Communication is necessary to ensure the seamless functioning of all systems. This necessary information exchange creates a huge challenge for hospitals. And that is where cloud computing comes in.
Once considered something for the distant future, the COVID-19 pandemic drove massive adoption of this technology. The health cloud is now an integral part of most hospitals. Realizing the usefulness of this tech, the healthcare sector and cloud service providers are now leveraging this technology to its fullest.
How Does Cloud Computing Drive Interoperability?
Interoperability in healthcare is the integration of data into the system. This integration of data makes data easily accessible to doctors or attendants. Any hospital will need to transfer data at one point, irrespective of its origin or storage. Previously, such information exchanges were done through conventional means. However, adopting cloud computing facilitates the efficient and effective delivery of such information.
The use of cloud computing in healthcare gives easy access to patient data to healthcare providers. This information can then be shared, and timely treatment could be done. This also enables the use of distance consultations. By using online methods of patient consultation, cases can be reviewed irrespective of location. Virtual consultations have increased exponentially since the onset of the pandemic. This can be observed on the ground level. Telehealth visits in April 2020 constituted 43% of the total medical primary visits. Compare this to April last year, when the number was around 1%.
Interoperability through cloud services also promotes the integration of various sectors like payment, insurance, and pharmaceuticals. Using the seamless data transfer of the cloud, different stakeholders can cooperate. Thus, allowing them to make their process more efficient and accelerate healthcare delivery.
What are the Benefits of Interoperability in Healthcare?
The ultimate goal of cloud computing is to improve information sharing. The benefits of integrating cloud computing and healthcare are many. Having a complete and accurate picture of the patient allows doctors to make better decisions quickly. Further, it allows patients to become active participants in their care. Here are some benefits of the cloud that can be realized for stakeholders:
1. Coordination of Care
Care coordination involves patients, caregivers, and care teams involved in the management of patients. This involves the movement of data across several platforms and service providers. This movement needs to be in real-time to provide appropriate care. Only through using cloud computing can this transfer of data be possible.
2. Improvement in Processes
This includes administrative and business processes. The health sector is riddled with time-consuming tasks such as information intake, team coordination, and reporting. By integrating health services with health information services, direct access to information can be given to the patient, thereby eliminating various time-consuming processes and improving the efficiency of processes.
3. Better Safety and Satisfaction
Interoperability provides doctors full access to patient information. Immediate access to such information gives hospitals a better idea of a patient’s medical history, past encounters, and preferences. This helps make informed decisions, reduce adverse events, and avoid duplicate testing. It also ensures that proper follow-up is adhered to among the healthcare providers.
4. Value-based Care
Public health systems need to coordinate effectively to provide healthcare for the community. In such cases, population-level data analysis is a crucial aspect of the healthcare information system. Here interoperability allows multiple institutions to work together and manage high-risk populations effectively. Moreover, population data enables more cost-effective care.
At an individual level, having data on a patient can help shore up information gaps. A key consideration of value-based care is integrating conventional health data with non-traditional ones. Data such as food security and access to housing can be leveraged to identify risks within a population group actively. This allows health organizations to work effectively towards positive outcomes.
How Can Interoperability Exchanges Occur in Healthcare?
With these benefits, the health industry can take a use case-driven approach to create its networks. This will allow them to dream the flow of information and create business practices to drive interoperability. Here are some use case-driven examples of interoperability exchanges in healthcare.
- Data of care delivery: A doctor can request patient data from other clinics or hospitals. This data, such as medication and lab reports, can then be used to assess the current situation of the patient better.
- Consent Management: In such a highly interconnected health cloud system, taking the patient’s consent is essential. A centralized content management model can inform the doctor of the patient’s willingness to share their data.
- Lab results: Instead of waiting for the patients to show their test results, doctors can directly check them through exchange networks.
- Medications: Knowing the previous medication of a patient gives the doctor a better idea of further treatment. This allows them to make and plan appropriate follow-ups and produce a better diagnosis.
- Patient intake: The doctor can access the health record of the patient before the appointment using a query and response process. Thus allowing them to provide better treatment during the consultation.
- Patient preference: Information exchange networks allow doctors to find out patients’ care references. This empowers patients and makes them a part of the process.
- Query services: Doctors who need more information on the patient referred to them can go to the query network. This network can be connected to other health systems and networks to assemble a complete patient record.
- Care transition: Patients are often referred to another hospital or make a transition of care as a part of their recovery process. The interoperable exchange of documents facilitates this process and makes it quick and easy for healthcare providers.
How Rapyder Helps Healthtech Companies Adopt Cloud?
Rapyder can help healthcare providers with a cloud migration strategy and help move their IT systems to the AWS cloud seamlessly at minimal cost and with maximum efficiency. Be a part of the future with Rapyder. Rapyder’s cloud migration process is a step-by-step strategy to migrate a Healthcare company’s IT systems and applications to the AWS Cloud.
Final Words
The healthcare sector is a big cloud computing user, but it still has a long way to go. Combining it with new techs like AI and the Internet of medical things will further open new avenues of streamlining healthcare. By combining such technologies with the cloud, interoperability can be boosted while simultaneously lowering the costs associated with it. With so many positives, it is hard to imagine a future without it. Indeed, healthcare cloud providers will lead the way for healthcare services in the future.
