Digital Advancement in Health Services

The health sector has changed the most and is still experiencing disruption caused by the digitization of health services. The pandemic gave rise to a health crisis from the end of the year 2019 to the beginning of the year 2022. Technology was the protagonist that took control in this scenario of fear and uncertainty and brought healthcare to those who needed it the most. It was the change in thinking that helped activate the mindset of people in the healthcare sector irrespective of the area of specialization— hospitals, clinics, services, and health centers. the digitization of health services is here to stay.

We have benefited from the explosion of telemedicine services, which is perhaps the most visible, and we now cannot imagine living without this resource. This is just a small example of the digitalization of health services, and there is still a sea of opportunities for us to unite technology in favor of quality health. This union will provide agility in the diagnosis of diseases, prevention and coordinated care with patients, decision support systems based on data giving support to doctors in the indication of increasingly effective treatment, and all this reflected in the reduction of costs for health institutions and operators.

In order for us to reach this level of efficiency, it is essential that we have a fully integrated health ecosystem, extracting and delivering quality information at all points of care, from a simple routine consultation, and emergency care, through the reading of laboratory tests, imaging tests, pathological anatomy tests, genetic tests, treatments, clinical outcomes and data measured by the patient, pointing out symptoms, feelings, and habits of their daily lives.

Basically, to have this operating ecosystem, the technology acts as a means offering an EMR as good usability for doctors and nurses to record care information and all the clinical history of patients. A CRM system that allows clients to monitor health programs at a 360° view, generating alerts and indicators of adherence to treatments by patients for monitoring and action by care, multidisciplinary and operational teams.

The use of applications is essential in this flow of information within this integrated health ecosystem. Patients, doctors, and care teams need to have mobile resources due to their ease of use and access to electronic medical records, appointments, electronic prescriptions, carry out consultations by telemedicine, and access to test results, medical reports, alerts about medication, and treatments. Another feature that is growing is the integration of these applications with wearable devices and the extension of services using ChatBots in messaging applications. With the use of this ecosystem day after day by doctors, patients, and other teams, will generate a large volume of data. In order for us to transform all this data into relevant information for institutions, it is of fundamental importance to have a Big Data and Artificial Intelligence strategy to generate indicators and have the predictability of opportunities with the analysis of captured data.

To guarantee all this integration between different applications— EMR, CRM, Apps, Big Data, ChatBots, and Wearables in addition to guaranteeing that the information arrives with quality, security and in the time that the customer needs, it is necessary to have an interoperability strategy making use of middleware. This middleware will work as an integrator of this entire chain of technological solutions, whether with your company’s internal applications, as well as integrating with partner companies.

Finally, all of this is supported by a robust, reliable, and scalable cloud infrastructure. An infrastructure that allows the implementation of new technological resources, having a culture of experimentation and innovation without putting at risk what already works well in its integrated health ecosystem. This will allow your institution to increasingly offer access to high-quality, low-cost healthcare.