Month: February 2021

Healthcare IT integration is a combination of IT and healthcare sector and involves the application of latest IT solutions to monitor people’s health, perform secured exchange of their electronic data and provide economical healthcare solution. The purpose of integrating health systems is to provide seamless services; make them more accessible, easy to understand and use; and lead to better overall patient health.

The major factors that will accelerate the growth of the healthcare IT integration market are high healthcare costs, government initiatives to curb this rising cost and the growing demand to incorporate IT in the healthcare domain.  Healthcare IT Integration Market is valued at 3.15 USD Billion in 2019 and expected to reach 6.21 USD Billion by 2026 with the CAGR of 10.2% over the forecast period.

The healthcare IT integration market has been categorized on the basis of product and services, and application. The products in healthcare IT integration market include interface/integration engines, media integration solutions, medical device integration software, and other integration tools. Based on the services provided, the market is segmented into implementation services, support and maintenance services, and training services.

Based on application, the market is segmented into hospital integration, clinic integration, lab integration, radiology integration, medical device integration and others. Due to the multiple applications of IT integration in hospitals, that encourage value based healthcare reimbursement, the hospital integration segment holds the largest share and is expected to witness growth during the forecast period.

MARKET SEGMENTATION

By Product, Services & Application

• By Product
  • Interface/Integration Engines
  • Media Integration Solutions
  • Medical Device Integration Software
  • Other Integration Tools

• By Services
  • Implementation services
  • Support and maintenance services
  • Training services

• By Application
  • Hospital integration
  • Clinic integration
  • Lab integration
  • Radiology integration
  • Medical devices integration

What are the benefits of Medical Devices Integration Software?

The top four reasons to consider implementing such software into the hospital’s work.

1. Integrated workflow. By integrating medical devices the hospital receives an efficient, easy, and understandable workflow. All the sections of the hospital are connected, and due to the web-based system, they can be easily controlled.
2. Eliminating the manual work with health records and clinical data. Now the software for integration is able to collect and analyze the data automatically. The medical personnel will receive clear and processed information, probably even collected and summed up from more than one device at a time. So the process goes way faster increasing data quality and eliminating all the possible errors due to human factors.
3. Remote control. Now doctors can watch over the health status of each patient even if they aren’t physically at the hospital. It can be possible due to the cloud-based online access to the information and the personal cabinet.
4. Web-based storage. The received data from all the medical devices now will be filtered, stored, and secured online. This means that there is no more struggling with searching for the required patient’s data through all the devices and the system will collect everything automatically and send the data directly to the place of storage.

Read more about the integration of Healthcare IT:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/645857

Benefits of Healthcare Information Technology | CCHIT

While the health IT sector has made a big impact in terms of facilitating cooperation between electronic health records (EHRs). Interoperability requires a collaborative environment around healthcare technology infrastructure, data standards, and permissions, among other things. To simplify healthcare data exchange, health IT vendors and providers should work closely with support from governmental agencies to make continual progress on this path to true interoperability. The four basic functions required for interoperability: data gathering, data reception, data distribution, and data integration.

Five keys to simplifying interoperability in healthcare.

1. Wider Adoption of Data Standards

The standards for digital exchange of data to achieve true interoperability. HL7 has gained widespread adoption, yet room for interpretation means that there’s significant variance in how these standards are implemented. FHIR a newer specification developed by HL7, makes some strides yet shares some of the same concerns that exist with the HL7 standards. For instance, vendors may not implement all FHIR APIs, or they may not implement the complete APIs either scenario prevents true interoperability. The goal must be to shift from isolated data and participate in the industry process of building an interoperable healthcare ecosystem.

2. Choosing the Right Health Information Technologies

Healthcare organizations that continue to use inefficient or outdated technologies for data integration are going to find it difficult to make the transition. Their tech interface might be incompatible with the cutting-edge cloud technologies, or they may discover that their system simply does not support the modern data formats. These issues are common and require a reliable and advanced solution.

3. Improving EHR Integration for Better Point of Care Solutions

EHR integration is one of the most important use cases in healthcare interoperability. Interoperability can avoid the need for a clinician to work with diverse interfaces to obtain the data they need. According to health IT experts, doctors are far more likely to modify their treatment protocols if they are provided with relevant substantiating data right at the point of care.

4. Bringing More Uniformity in State Privacy Laws

The process of healthcare interoperability can go to the next level if there is more harmony between the rules and regulations related to healthcare data privacy. To achieve nationwide interoperability for the best possible patient care, providers in one state should be in a position to exchange vital health information with providers in another state.

5. Augmenting Patient Matching Capabilities

Healthcare interoperability gets further complicated if the patient matching technologies are not up to the mark. With unreliable patient matching systems, even if the healthcare providers manage to streamline other issues, they would still fall short of their objectives if the data is not attributed to the appropriate patients on the other side.

 

Read more about Interoperability in healthcare:

Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence shown by machines that can be helpful to perform several tasks using sentiment analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This technology allows machines to learn on their own from past data and the given information, make sense of it, and use this information to do various business tasks. AI is a superset of Machine Learning and Deep Learning, and these technologies have their own sets of responsibilities while equipping machines.

Role of AI in Healthcare

AI is being leveraged to deploy efficient and precise inventions that will help take care of patients suffering from these diseases and hopefully find a cure for them. AI provides several advantages over traditional methods of analytics and making clinical decisions. AI algorithms make the systems more precise as they get the opportunity to understand training data, which furthers helps humans get unprecedented insights into treatment variability, care processes, diagnostics, and patient results. 

Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

While there are several benefits of this technology in the field of healthcare, it has some flaws as well

Pros	Cons
Improved diagnosis	Complications in learning AI
Serves rural communities better	A difficult change to adapt to
Better clinical decisions	Requires human assistance
Streamlines several processes	Requires the implementation of the correct AI platform

 

What are the applications of artificial intelligence systems in healthcare?

1. Detect signs of diabetic retinopathy

AI diagnostic system has been developed to autonomously analyzes images of the retina for signs of diabetic retinopathy.

2. Breast density via mammography

Monitor breast density via mammography to support accurate decisions in breast cancer screening.

The technology uses AI to assess breast density in order to identify patients that may experience reduced sensitivity to digital mammography due to dense breast tissue.

3. Support in Clinical Decisions

The assistance of Natural Language Processing (NLP) makes it more convenient for doctors to narrow down all relevant information from patient reports. 

Artificial Intelligence holds the ability to store and process large sets of data, which can provide knowledge databases and facilitate examination and recommendation individually for each patient, thus helping to enhance clinical decision support.

4. Enhance Primary Care and Triage through Chatbots

Artificial Intelligence assists in enabling smooth flow and automation of primary care, allowing doctors to stress over more crucial and dire cases. 

Saving money on avoidable trips to the doctor, patients can benefit from medical chatbots, which is an AI-powered service, incorporated with smart algorithms that provide patients with instant answers to all their health-related queries and concerns while also guiding them on how to deal with any potential problems. 

5. Robotic Surgeries

AI and collaborative robots have revolutionized surgeries in terms of their speed, and depth while making delicate incisions. Since robots don’t get tired, the issue of fatigue in the middle of lengthy and crucial procedures is eliminated.

AI machines are capable of employing data from past operations to develop new surgical methods. The preciseness of these machines reduces the possibility of tremors or any unintended or accidental movements during the surgeries. 

6. Virtual nursing assistants

AI systems facilitate virtual nursing assistants that can perform a range of tasks from conversing with patients to directing them to the best and effective care unit. Many AI-powered applications of virtual nursing assistants presently enable more regular interactions between patients and care providers between office visits to avoid any unnecessary hospital visits. Also there is a system can even facilitate wellness checks through voice and AI.

7. Aiding in the accurate diagnosis

AI has the capacity to surpass human doctors and help them detect, predict, and diagnose diseases more accurately and at a faster rate. Likewise, AI algorithms have proved to be not only accurate and precise at specialty-level diagnostics, but also cost-effective in terms of detecting diabetic retinopathy. 

 

Interoperability Definition 

HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) defines interoperability as:

The extent to which systems and devices can exchange data, and interpret that shared data. For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data and subsequently present that data such that it can be understood by a user.

In simple terms it means various healthcare systems can communicate seamlessly with each other making medical data universally available.

Interoperability in Healthcare Data: A Life-Saving Advantage

When health system clinicians make care decisions based on their organization’s EHR data alone, they’re only using a small portion of patient health information. Additional data sources such as health information exchanges (HIEs) and patient-generated and reported data round out the full picture of an individual’s health and healthcare needs. This comprehensive insight enables critical, and sometimes life-saving, treatment and health management choices. To leverage the data from beyond the four walls of a health system and combine it with clinical, financial, and operational EHR data, organizations need an interoperable platform approach to health data. The Health Catalyst® Data Operating System (DOS™), for example, combines, manages, and leverages disparate forms of health data for a complete view of the patient and more accurate insights into the best care decisions.

Four Levels of Interoperability

• Foundational (Level 1): Establishes the inter-connectivity requirements needed for one system or application to securely communicate data to and receive data from another.
• Structural (Level 2): Defines the format, syntax and organization of data exchange including at the data field level for interpretation.
• Semantic (Level 3): Provides for common underlying models and codification of the data including the use of data elements with standardized definitions from publicly available value sets and coding vocabularies, providing shared understanding and meaning to the user.
• Organizational (Level 4): Includes governance, policy, social, legal and organizational considerations to facilitate the secure, seamless and timely communication and use of data both within and between organizations, entities and individuals. These components enable shared consent, trust and integrated end-user processes and workflows.

What is Health Information Exchange and Data Sharing?

Health information exchange, or HIE, provides the capability to electronically move clinical information among disparate healthcare information systems and maintain the meaning of the information being exchanged. The goal of health information exchange is to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data to provide safe, timely, efficient, effective and equitable patient-centered care. HIE can also be used by public health authorities to assist in the analysis of the health of populations.

The benefits of interoperability in health care

Providers and plans are likely to see the highest ROI through the following:

• Reduction in administrative costs 
• Increased efficiency of care delivery 
• Reduction in the total cost of care 
• Increased revenue and growth

Reduction in administrative costs

Interoperability in health care can enable both provider and plan organizations to reduce or redeploy FTEs away from time-consuming manual processes that often do not create value to tasks that can directly reduce health care costs and improve quality.

Increased efficiency of care delivery

Radical interoperability in health care allows clinicians access to real- or near-real-time data wherever care is being delivered. These capabilities can also enable clinicians to change how care is delivered, both in terms of where care is delivered and who delivers it, in order to increase the number of patients receiving care.

Reduction in the total cost of care

While health plans have always strived to reduce the amount of health care services utilized, providers in value-based care (VBC) reimbursement models are now incentivized to take similar steps.

Increased revenue and growth

The organizations leveraging technology to make interoperability in health care happen faster will likely acquire and retain patients most effectively. Plans and providers are shifting their focus to the health care consumer, who can drive revenue and growth.

 

References:

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/life-sciences-and-health-care/articles/interoperability-in-healthcare.html

Interoperability in Healthcare