By Optus Business

Digital connectivity is transforming the way customers, employees and spaces connect in practically every industry around the world. In the sixth instalment of our Unified Experience Series, we’re examining how the healthcare sector can provide a better, more seamless experience for patients and practitioners alike, improving the efficiency and quality of medical care.

With the looming threat of disruption, Australian healthcare sector must find ways to navigate tighter regulations, an aging population, and rapidly changing customer and employee demands. Digital transformation – with a focus on asset digitisation, mobility, the IoT connectivity and unified communications – has the potential to help solve many of these challenges.

Digital healthcare: a more considerate, seamless experience

The digitisation of hospitals and other healthcare facilities is key if the sector is to retain, and increase, its value to the community. Customer – or patient – experiences must be streamlined, consistent, well-informed and considerate. The transition requires the largely paper-based industry to move to Electronic Medical Records (EMR).

Imagine you have access to a health app, customised to your own personal health details and requirements. The app sends you a reminder for a routine checkup appropriate to your age and medical history. Your local doctor offers online appointment scheduling, so you book a time that fits in with your calendar. At the appointment, you doctor finds that a minor operation will be needed and instantly arranges the procedure.

EMR makes records smarter, more accurate, and more widely available – providing practitioners with a range of benefits, such as access to the latest research, and a better view of a patient’s medical history. For the patient, this means a more informed and consistent treatment – with huge benefits for those living in regional and remote locations.

My Health Record, the Australian government’s new digital medical record, marks the country’s gradual transition to a digitised healthcare system. The initiative has the support of Australia’s main health bodies, including the Australian Medical Association, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, and the Royal College of Australian GPs.

The president of the AMA, Dr. Tony Bartone, has said the record will improve the quality of care that patients receive.

“It will assist in reducing unnecessary or duplicate tests, provide a full Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medication history (thus helping avoid medication errors) and be of significant aid to doctors working in emergency situations,” he said.

“It will support practitioners, particularly those who may be seeing a patient for the first time, to have access to the information they need to best care for the patient.”

Protecting personal health data – why trust is key

Back to the doctor’s office – you’ve been diagnosed, and your operation is scheduled. You check into hospital, and have the surgery. But before you can be discharged, you need a certain type of medicine that’s low in stock. Luckily, the hospital’s new digital system identified the upcoming need for your medicine, and placed an order ahead of time. You receive your medicine quickly, and can go home – allowing the hospital to help a new patient who needs the bed.

Of course, when something as personal as health data is collected and stored, concerns of privacy and cyber security must be addressed. Australians are currently deciding whether to opt in or out of the My Health Record system, amid fears about the safety of the medical data and the ability of the system to withstand cyber incidents.

Advocacy groups such as Digital Rights Watch have expressed concerns about the security of the My Health Record initiative, and are urging the public to consider opting out. But Health Minister Greg Hunt said the system has military-grade security that people can rely on.

Having a robust cyber security defense to protect personal data is essential for building trust and ensuring customers can use your services with confidence. Health data is valuable, and with many organisations still working with legacy systems and outdated software, the healthcare industry is a major target for cyber attacks.

Managed security services that protect everything down to the network can provide assurance for customers that their health data and services are secure and safe.

Streamlining processes with IoT and mobile connectivity

Now that you’re home and on the mend, your doctor can share a post-operation care plan with you through your app. Your wearable fitness tracker is also connected to the app, automatically capturing measurements for you and your doctor to monitor – meaning a faster response to a change in your condition, allowing treatment to be altered as needed for a better recovery.

Increasingly, healthcare is being delivered in new environments with lower staffing levels, including within patients’ homes. An IoT platform can greatly improve efficiency and patient safety through remote patient monitoring. IoT strengthens the data insights of wearable devices measuring the health of patients. This has the potential to greatly improve clinical supervision in aged care.

Narrowband IoT – a Low Power, Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology – allows devices and sensors to connect to the internet, on very little power and without the need for Bluetooth or an additional device. Narrowband IoT is cost effective, helping the efficient delivery of services and improved quality of care.

Mobile devices and applications improve customer experience, and have the ability to adapt to future changes in clinical practice at a low cost. They can extend the reach of EMRs, allowing practitioners to access medical data from a wide range of locations, as well as enabling quick and easy communication to provide better team-based knowledge and care. 

Unified communications for unified care

Collaboration technologies such as unified communications (UC) services can help to create a seamless customer experience by enabling healthcare professionals to better meet patients’ current and future needs – regardless of location.

Say you’ve encountered a complication in your post-operation recovery. Your doctor needs to get the opinion of an expert – but that expert lives on the other side of the world. Through video conference and collaboration technology, your doctor can share notes, insights and ideas with this hard-to-reach specialist, to find the best possible solution to your problem.

UC solutions facilitate more agile, mobile healthcare services that can reach more people and with greater expertise. Practitioners can collaborate in real-time to diagnose and treat patients more quickly and effectively, even from hard to reach locations.

Improved communication and collaboration abilities have allowed Royal Rehab to increase the time clinicians can spend with clients by up to 20 per cent – while also increasing the quality, accuracy and timeliness of information. The efficiencies are the result of enterprise mobility solutions, enabling users to access and update information in real-time, on the go.

Staying relevant in a changing world

The healthcare sector has long been plagued by inefficiencies and rising costs. Should healthcare providers fail to harness digital transformation and unify customer experience, they will be disrupted. Big tech brands like Amazon, Apple, Google and Uber have already shown interest in reinventing healthcare. Last year, startup healthcare brand, Forward, founded by former employees of Google and Uber, launched in LA.

Forward’s healthcare approach aims to transform the experience of visiting the doctor – for example, a flat-screen monitor in the doctor’s exam room uses a natural-language-processing system that follows the doctor-patient conversation, taking notes and collecting data.

But this kind of disruption may be just the medicine needed to spur the Australian healthcare industry into action. To remain relevant, medical providers must act now. For organisations without the resources to deploy full EMR now, beginning with digitising high volume, high value workflows with mobile can help to standardise processes, reduce risk, and familiarise staff with digital technologies. The long-term benefits will be reinvigorating for the entire community.