The Key is Collaboration
By Edward Keiper, President and CEO of Velocity
The key to the future of medicine is collaboration. New smart technologies allow information sharing like never before. With government mandated laws such as Meaningful Use, medical practices are moving into the age of Big Data. There are four main areas that policy makers identify as goals for the next ten years:
- Share quality indicators. As healthcare becomes more networked, data from diverse sources will provide a far more accurate picture of every aspect of medicine, from the micro to the macro view.
- Make better use of health data. Because of new EMR standards, medicine is moving toward cloud technology. Once data is digital, patient information becomes a powerful diagnostic tool. Slicing and dicing data points allows for new applications of aggregated patient data.
- Adopt digital systems. Medical practices have been slow to adopt new systems. An outsourced IT solution can provide full transition to the cloud, from design to implementation.
- A growing health IT marketplace. The entrepreneurial nature of health IT is expected to propel the industry to adopt faster and more user-friendly systems, making practice management far simpler.
The connected medical practice is agile and adapts more easily to new developments. While every transition has challenges, a digital solution is worth the payoff, as it is far more cost effective in the long run.
Because a medical practice is in the business of patient care, outsourcing IT can result in a boost in revenue due to improved efficiency. Wasted time and money are the two biggest issues for practice managers. As is the case with the larger workforce, physicians are more mobile than ever, and will the ability to access patient data from any location, at any time will soon become imperative.
By starting with the administrative aspect of the small to medium sized medical practice, risk is minimized. Transferring files to the cloud for storage is an easy first step on the path to compliance with Meaningful Use regulations. As data collection and analysis become more collaborative, healthcare professionals are becoming able to acquire a holistic view of patient populations.
For both practices and patients, this is good. But it’s going to take a commitment from practice leaders to ensure that their practice keeps pace.
This article was originally published in the Velocity blog and is republished here with permission.