Ernst & Young, a global leader in advisory services, published a report on how to create the right data environment for a connected health ecosystem. Reflecting on their report, we published a paper on how digital transformation can help improve the work of medical teams. Both documents discuss approaches on how to overcome the tech challenges related to supporting new models of care.
Healthcare organisations are constantly under pressure to improve patient flow, reduce patient risk, and deliver better patient care, and the COVID-19 situation has further increased the need to change the models of care. In this new environment, medical teams are constantly under stress to make timely, accurate, and safe decisions. They are constantly losing time and are in risk of making poor decisions due to the fragmentation of information and multiple sources of patient data.
To successfully cope with these challenges, healthcare organisations must adopt new models of care and fundamentally change their current approach to digital technology. The focus should be on the data which needs to be stored and governed independently of the applications that created it.
Rachel Dunscombe, CEO NHS Digital Academy, emphasises that: “Data is for life, not just for one system. If we consider that as a principle, we will design and procure systems differently.”*
An open-data platform presents a solid foundation. According to Aloha McBride from Ernst & Young: “an open platform environment is required to connect and share data, at scale, within and between enterprises and systems. An optimal platform will separate content and technology and be vendor-neutral, distributed and modular – incorporating third-party as well as legacy systems.”*
The open-data approach has already been put into practice by hospitals, research institutions, and regional and national healthcare systems across 15 countries. This approach has proven to be effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, since it has enabled the rapid response of medical teams to new circumstances.
Visit www.better.care/resources and further explore how a digital transformation based on an open-data approach can help improve the work of medical teams, and learn from other healthcare organisations already benefiting from it.
Author Rok Knafelj
* Aloha McBride: How will you design information architecture to unlock the power of data? Retrieved on 15 October at: https://www.ey.com/en_gl/health/how-will-you-design-information-architecture-to-unlock-the-power
