If there’s ever been a time for ensuring providers have access to the most accurate, connected data, it’s now.
Yes, healthcare organisations have successfully moved from paper filing systems to electronic health records (EHRs). But now, more than ever, we need a complete view of the patient to safely deliver care and promote the health of the population. How do we get there? The industry seems to have come to a consensus on the answer: through interoperable systems.
It wasn’t long ago we were shifting from paper to digital. Our ambitions grew as healthcare reached for a complete view of the patient, no matter where the data resided. Despite many incentives, data sharing advanced slowly. So, the U.S. Congress got on it, with the 21st Century Cures Act and its open APIs “without special effort.” The White House and CMS created the Promoting Interoperability incentive programme and the MyHealthEData Initiative. And standards organisations and collaborations continued to promote standards adoption and advocate their use.
Salesforce and MuleSoft are a critical part of this effort, working diligently to provide the systems that can help organisations create a 360-degree view of the patient and foster a healthcare system that can attend to patient needs in real time — especially during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic or emerging situations such as the monkeypox virus. Interoperability is the brass ring in achieving these goals.
Competitive, cost, and security pressures are pushing us harder than ever towards an interoperability model. We see this come to life in the spate of recent megadeals, including Intermountain Healthcare and SCL Health’s merger to create a larger Intermountain Healthcare, Advocate Aurora and Atrium Health’s 67 hospital merger to form Advocate health, and Amazon buying One Medical. When healthcare organisations come together, so do their systems, creating an opportunity to gain insight from rapid aggregation. This all can lead more quickly to new strategies, products, and services. It also can lead to an invaluable source of truth for patient data — all of which will improve trust between providers and patients, and, ultimately, healthcare outcomes.
The initial phase of going digital helped create the EHR system. Now we aim to go beyond EHR, towards API-enabled, interoperable systems. Technology has advanced so much in the past decade, and with that, our Salesforce toolkit is so much more robust, with blockchain, advanced analytics, and, of course, CRM. They are not, however, all neatly packaged in the EHR.
At Salesforce, we see so many factors speeding us towards interoperability: the rise of value-based care and regulatory disruption, the accelerated creation of industry data and services, the need for virtual care, as well as the need to access modern digital capabilities. It’s all exciting but it will take time before interoperability becomes routine and patients can reasonably expect a consumer experience that is as convenient as ordering dinner online.
In this guide, we explore the need for interoperability in our healthcare system, the roadblocks preventing it from thriving, the interim steps we need to take, and the role of integration to provide that consumer experience that ultimately helps patients be more informed on their own healthcare journeys and lead a healthier life. Then we introduce you to industry pioneers who are paving the way for truly connected healthcare.
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