Cloud-based solutions help break down the information and system silos that have traditionally impeded clinicians’ ability to connect disparate data to personalize and improve patient care. Simultaneously, cloud platforms and applications can generate cost savings for an ecosystem that has been grappling for years with how to create operational efficiencies in light of rising costs and stagnant budgets.
Here are some examples that showcase how cloud-enabled digital transformation opens up data access, improves patient and healthcare worker experiences, streamlines common workflows, and drives efficiencies across the entire ecosystem:
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Enhance patient engagement.
Consumers, satiated by a steady diet of streamlined and personalized interactions, whether buying goods on Amazon or choosing what to binge on Netflix, now expect a comparable experience when engaging with their healthcare providers. Telehealth visits, a staple of the pandemic period, are now a requisite for patients who desire impactful one-on-one consultations with their provider from the comfort of their own home as opposed to traveling
to an office or facility where they
can face long wait times or risk virus exposure. Healthcare chatbots, virtual coaches, and connected devices such as insulin or heart monitors enable medical teams to keep continuous tabs on patients and monitor treatment plans in lieu of an office visit. They also give patients self-service options, whether to get answers
to basic health-related questions or to resolve issues without the need for in-person consultation.
Cloud-based systems are also central for integrating system silos, providing the ability to connect diverse and disparate data to drive more intelligence insights, including those that optimize and customize patient care. Cloud-based portals also give patients an easily accessible, personalized space for staying on top of appointments, test results, and communications with their medical team.
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Bolster clinician productivity. A shift to cloud-based systems can provide clinicians with the data and resources they need to get their jobs done, whether that’s getting help with inputting patient notes into
the medical record, enabling extended collaboration across care teams, or gaining access to detailed patient data culled from different sources.
The ease and accessibility of cloud-based systems enable teams to coordinate patient care activities and communicate the right information to the right individuals at every stage of the patient care continuum. Clinicians are able to collaborate with peers to learn from similar health conditions while laying out a treatment plan for patients with similarities among thousands of variables, including demographics and responses to treatment plans. In addition, caregivers can extend the patient experience beyond the four walls of the hospital or the office, enabling them to better monitor recovery or enforce specific rehabilitation requirements for people with chronic conditions, helping reduce the chance of relapse or readmission to a health facility.
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Improve health insights and diagnoses. Applying big data analytics and AI algorithms to patient data can aid in patient diagnosis as well as empower medical research. The ability to connect healthcare-related data and patient information from disparate systems and leverage technology to identify patterns by using imaging techniques, test data, and genetic factors can reveal critical indicators for the potential impact of treatment plans and lead to better health outcomes. “These kinds of innovations are happening at a very rapid pace in the industry,” Rishi says, “but they can’t really be enabled if you don’t have a powerful cloud where you can flex your storage and compute capacity quickly.”
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Integrate the ecosystem. The interoperability advantages of the cloud enable the healthcare ecosystem to share critical patient data more readily, improving healthcare planning and delivery and providing more timely access to prescriptions and treatments. Medical specialists are better able to wade in on patient cases, no matter where the patients reside, which bolsters care. Seamless sharing of data and workflows across various stakeholders in the healthcare delivery ecosystem — from payers to insurance companies — fosters efficiencies and establishes a higher level of care.
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Optimize the electronic health record (EHR) environment. Healthcare organizations can save money, optimize workflows, and create space by migrating their EHR environments to the cloud. Some are leveraging the cloud to set up and tear down the EHR training environment, whereas others are looking at the cloud as
a disaster recovery (DR) platform for their critical systems or to perform all development and application integration testing for EHR systems in a cloud environment. Moving forward, more healthcare providers are going all-in to put the complete EHR environment in the cloud for production purposes.