By Henry Adams, Country Manager at InterSystems South Africa – South African healthcare is being pushed to do more with the systems, people, and budgets already under strain.
Public and private organisations may face different pressures, but both are working to improve access, efficiency, patient experience, and resilience as they prepare for a more connected future.
In the private sector, the cost pressure is visible in the numbers. The Council for Medical Schemes reported that medical schemes covered around 14.6% of South Africa’s population in 2024, while the 2026 weighted-average contribution increases across several major schemes range from 6.8% to 9.9%.
In the public sector, the pressure is different but just as real, with workforce shortages, resource constraints, ageing infrastructure, and growing demand continuing to affect service delivery. Across both environments, healthcare leaders are being asked to improve access, efficiency, patient experience, and resilience with systems that were not always designed to work together.
The challenge is that many healthcare organisations are trying to move forward on fragmented foundations. Most already have systems and specialist platforms doing important work across clinical, operational, administrative, financial, and laboratory environments. Yet patient histories, laboratory results, operational views, billing information, and administrative context may still sit in different systems, formats, and workflows.
When that happens, digital transformation becomes harder to scale. A portal, analytics tool, AI initiative, or patient engagement platform may solve one immediate problem while adding complexity if the underlying data layer remains disconnected. Teams are left with manual workarounds, duplicated information, custom interfaces, and limited views of what is happening across the organisation.
Healthcare leaders now have to look beyond each individual digital initiative and ask whether the foundation beneath it is strong enough to support connected care. Systems, data, and workflows need to work together safely, consistently, and with enough context to support better decisions.
Putting the right foundation in place
This is the role of a digital backbone. It is the trusted, interoperable data and integration layer that enables existing systems to connect, exchange information securely, and make data available where it is needed. It gives healthcare organisations a way to move from isolated digital projects to a more coherent architecture.
Across public and private healthcare, connected care depends on data moving safely and meaningfully between hospitals, clinics, laboratories, funders, administrators, and public health systems.
Connecting what already exists
In most healthcare environments, modernisation has to build on the systems already in place. Replacing everything at once would be unrealistic, expensive, and disruptive. The practical work is to preserve existing investments while creating a consistent data layer beneath them.
This is where interoperability becomes a strategic requirement. A hospital information system, laboratory platform, radiology system, patient portal, mobile app, or analytics tool can all deliver value in its own context. The greater value comes when those systems can share information without losing meaning, context, or trust.
This gives clinicians a more complete view of the patient, helps operational teams identify bottlenecks and resource pressures earlier, and provides executives with more reliable insight into performance, cost, quality, and outcomes.
Reducing burden without adding complexity
Healthcare teams need digital infrastructure that makes daily work easier, reduces reliance on manual workarounds, and gives people better access to the information they need. When data does not flow, people end up filling the gaps. Information has to be chased, details re-entered, records reconciled, and workarounds maintained. Over time, that effort pulls attention away from better care, stronger systems, and more reliable decisions.
A digital backbone helps reduce that burden by creating a more stable and scalable foundation. It supports data movement across the organisation, strengthens governance, and allows teams to use information more consistently. It also protects sensitive and mission-critical data by embedding security, access control, traceability, and compliance into the architecture.
Preparing for AI and future healthcare
AI has made trusted data more urgent. Healthcare organisations are exploring how AI could support clinical documentation, decision support, patient engagement, operational planning, and administration. None of those use cases will scale safely if the data beneath them is fragmented, poorly governed, or difficult to trust.
AI readiness starts before the model, with accurate, connected, secure, and well-governed data that supports decisions in real workflows. The same foundation also supports other healthcare priorities. A 360-degree patient view, reliable patient identity, telemedicine, remote monitoring, patient portals, connected care networks, and value-based healthcare all depend on trusted data moving through a resilient architecture.
Building the backbone for connected care
For InterSystems, the digital backbone is a strategic architectural concept, not a single product. It creates a foundation that helps healthcare organisations integrate existing systems, keep critical data flowing, and support future digital initiatives with confidence.
South African healthcare will not transform sustainably through disconnected projects. Progress will depend on whether organisations can connect the systems they already have, govern the data they already generate, and use it at the point of care, in operations, and in decision-making.
Connected healthcare is built by strengthening the backbone that allows systems, data, and people to work together.