So, you want to reduce the amount of time and resources you use for administration and reporting, improve the healthcare process, gain more insights from data and make healthcare digital and data-driven? These four goals will help you prepare for the future, but how are you going to do it?

The ECD is essential for modern healthcare automation. That makes sense, because it has all the accurate data about clients. And that’s fine. But your current ECD isn’t designed for rapid innovation.

Why you need an innovation platform

You need a place where you can explore and manipulate data, without initiating big IT projects and without compromising the reliability and security of your key data sources. The Microsoft cloud is such a place. A place where you have access to standard features that speed up development, where you can work with data and AI in a safe and GDPR-compliant way, and where everything you create automatically integrates with your digital workplace.

You need such a platform to enable innovation that creates real value for your organisation, your people and your clients:

1. Transforming care processes differently. When you have data from all internal and external systems on one platform, you can enhance healthcare processes with speed and flexibility. The ECD does not allow this, but you can use the

1. data from the ECD on your platform.
   
2. Data in the right context.
   Data is most valuable when it has a function in the process. Provide a summary of a client’s history when an urgent call comes in. Or make a transcript of a meeting for those who missed it. These are just two examples of how fast, relevant and contextual access to data improves the healthcare process significantly.
   
3. Enabling ad hoc processes.
   Your healthcare institution has many processes that are not digital yet. Informal processes like consulting with colleagues or asking for assistance if you are understaffed. Asking each other to double-check to prevent errors. Important, but unstructured processes that you can enhance with good automation and digital communication.
   
4. Streamlining administration and reporting.
   In a large healthcare facility, thousands of daily reports are manually typed every day. Overtyped, we should actually say, because it often involves copying information from other systems. And busy caregivers collectively spend thousands of hours a day doing that. If you can improve that, it’s well worth the IT investment.

Easy-to-use (smartphone) apps, intelligent connections with external systems and a versatile data platform are essential for these innovations.

Budget, support and change management

All of the healthcare administrators we talk to understand the value of innovation and data. They all aim to better connect the healthcare chain and work together efficiently, digitally. They have to do this, anyway: digitalisation and data exchange are required by the Integrated Care Agreement, which follows the principles of ‘self if possible, at home if possible and digital if possible’. This is a totally new perspective on care. A transformation that needs investments in technology. But budgets are limited and IT projects are scrutinised. Besides, it is not only about technical changes. The organisation also needs to change: healthcare organisation and IT must cooperate more and more effectively in creating and implementing innovations. Because you will only earn support for such a big transformation if you can also show successes.

The Microsoft ecosystem in healthcare

At Rapid Circle, we find the solutions to these challenges in the Microsoft ecosystem. For example, we already helped several healthcare organizations bring their workplace and data to Azure, the Microsoft cloud. The Microsoft platform gives us the ability to innovate quickly, flexibly and risk-free. It also integrates with existing systems, such as the ECD. Within the Microsoft ecosystem, we think for example of the Power Platform. This contains not only Power Automate, Power Apps and Power BI, but also powerful capabilities to work with artificial intelligence (AI) and to integrate with other apps that were not originally built for that purpose. Often this can be done “low code,” meaning without having to write much program code.

This flexibility and speed ensure that healthcare and IT can work together and that we can quickly roll out successful innovations to healthcare professionals. Because they are desperate for tools to do their work better. That’s how you build innovation and trust.

Example: better support ad hoc collaborations

One way that the platform can be helpful is to make ad-hoc collaborations easier. Because planning your services is not easy, but the real planning starts after that. There are many tasks that employees need help with: from asking advice about a client to helping someone get out of bed and from verifying medications to dealing with a crisis. You cannot plan these things in advance and they require everyone to have the information necessary to make a good decision.

A mobile app that is easy to use can link an employee to the person who has the right knowledge, who is free or close by at that time. Just by pressing a button, without having to search for a phone number or see who is on duty that day. As long as all the data – including the one from the ECD – is accessible in such an app.

This was demonstrated well in a joint effort by various healthcare institutions, the police, the city and addiction care. By connecting the ECDs, they all share the right data and the police can easily contact the practitioner for a ‘disoriented person’. That is much better than keeping someone in a cell for hours while an officer searches far and wide to arrange care.

Mobile working and data sharing

Another example: dealing with an alarm. The signaling system can automatically connect every available employee on a call, if they all have a mobile phone and an earpiece. Without any manual intervention and hands-free, they can then talk about what actions are needed and who will visit the client where the alarm originated.

This example illustrates how the smartphone is becoming the main tool for managing healthcare. A mobile app is a great way to deliver personalised data to a healthcare provider. This can have a big positive effect. And a good innovation platform can also automatically record important data into your ECD. This reduces administration.

We also see a growing role for data, devices and the digital workplace in facilities management. For example, finding missing items, but entering data is the most disliked activity of every healthcare worker. A hoist has been relocated. There is no wheelchair available. So, you have to wander around and search again…

The data from the Internet of Things (IoT) will make a huge difference. There are light fixtures and door sensors that read RFID chips from all equipment moving through the room. This way, the central system will always know where your things are and your phone can guide you to the nearest available item. But all medical equipment is also connected nowadays. You can use all the information from those devices to provide better care and support.

Costs and benefits

As stated: moving from an application model to a platform model is a big change, both technically and organisationally. There are some expenses associated with it. But the expense of the project should not be the main factor in healthcare. The possible benefit is so huge that it makes the development costs seem small.

And there are 3 more important aspects of innovating on a technology platform that carry more weight than cost:

1. Security and privacy of data.
   Your organisation handles a lot of confidential client data, so it cares a lot about security, privacy and compliance. Working with large, reliable ‘building blocks’ created by a big company like Microsoft, gives you the benefit that the security and privacy issues have already been addressed and certified where needed. These components are also used by hundreds of other organisations, so any mistakes are quickly found.
   
2. Extensibility.
   A digital process is never done. Requirements change, your organisation changes and technology keeps evolving. Don’t build your processes as customisation within an app, such as your ECD, but on a platform. Then you can modify and extend them quickly and at relatively low costs.
   
3. Enables automation.
   Development, testing and deployment processes are much more ‘lightweight’. This brings innovation closer to the shop floor and makes it easy to quickly try out new processes. This improves collaboration between IT professionals and users and delivers results and returns faster.

In addition to this series of articles, we are organizing, together with Microsoft, the event “The influence of technology on the future of healthcare.”

Experts and experienced experts will tell you during this event:

• How to take the first step towards a cloud platform as a basis for healthcare innovation and regional cooperation
• How cloud technology and data will shape the future of healthcare, for example by facilitating the move from curative to preventive
• How data exchange radically improves chain care
• How a digital workplace frees healthcare providers from time-consuming manual work and makes their work more pleasant and efficient
• How a modern workplace contributes to retaining and attracting healthcare professionals
• How to break free from the limitations of your EPD and organize your care process the way it works for you
• The vision of other healthcare organizations on the future of healthcare

Register now and don’t miss it

Complete the form below and you will attend the event “The influence of technology on the future of healthcare” on April 18.

Other articles in this series: 

Prepare your healthcare facility for the future, even if you don’t know exactly what it looks like

Your goal as a healthcare institution is to help your clients live a long and happy life. But to do that, you face significant challenges now and in the future. You have a shortage of staff and fewer people want to work in healthcare. Clients also require more care, live longer and stay at home more often and for longer periods. But you are aware of all that. The question is: how are we going to solve it?

Better chain care in the cloud

Improving collaboration with chain partners is a common goal in many places. And working together means more than ‘knowing each other’s contact and calling in emergencies’. Most institutions and healthcare regions know this well. And across the Netherlands, healthcare professionals, administrators and IT professionals are looking for ways to make things work better. More and more healthcare institutions are realising that they cannot do this alone and need to share data with chain partners. Because your healthcare institution is often just one link in the chain. On a platform of freed data you can create care that is less laborious, but more effective.

Improve communication between your professionals

Healthcare is a fast-paced field. When the phone rings, or a client presses an emergency button, the situation may not be obvious at first. A cloud platform can integrate telephony with other communication modes and supplement the conversation in a secure way with data that matches the context. This way everyone is aware of what is happening and what the next step should be.

How to be an appealing employer for home care workers in 2024

As a healthcare provider, you want to manage your work well and be a desirable employer. A modern digital workplace reduces a lot of annoyance and needless manual work for your staff. It is also a crucial component in all digital workflows and in making data available.

Data as a driving force for healthcare innovation: ZorgSaam is building a platform for the future

What are the benefits of a data platform for better care, enhanced patient experiences and more efficient healthcare work? And how can a data platform prepare you, as a healthcare institution, for the future, even if you don’t know exactly what it will entail? ZorgSaam has the answer, because they created a robust data platform that supports cutting-edge healthcare innovations. With a data platform on Microsoft Azure, ZorgSaam can focus on data-driven decision-making, user-friendly access to information and other data applications for future-proof care, without technical obstacles.