Keeping a finger on the pulse of New Zealand’s three digital health technical challenges

SECTOR UPDATE – Daniel Sultana, APAC Regional Director - Paessler

We are lucky that we live in an era where most hospitals in New Zealand are already highly digitised – using digital technologies and easier accessible data - enabling medical staff to instantly access patient data to help improve the quality of patient care. Digitalisation is not only about helping doctors with their tasks, it helps improve workflows, enhances security for medical staff and hospitals and provides more transparency for patients. 

However with all the benefits, there are three technical challenges hospital IT departments need to consider when ensuring technology issues do not get in the way of the medical staff delivering essential frontline care.

1. The health of IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) devices in healthcare is one way to make hospitals more efficient, as it helps to provide the doctors with the relevant patient data immediately, which helps to accelerate medical processes and improve medical diagnoses and recommended treatments for patients.

Small, mobile devices for measuring the patient’s medical data at the bedside or in the laboratory are now commonplace. And we are seeing a trend towards people managing their own health by using wearables, fitness trackers and other health monitoring equipment at home.

Wearables can be used to monitor a patient's pulse, heart rate or blood sugar. If there is a sudden drop in any of these indicators, an ambulance could automatically be called, the paramedics can find the patient via GPS signal and hopefully save their life. 

What happens if the software crashes, the wearable gets disconnected, runs out of battery or is turned off? Healthcare services need to monitor these devices to be able to guarantee a constant flow of reliable body monitoring data. For hospitals providing their patients with wearables, the integration into their IT environment is only a first step; they should also update their network monitoring strategy.

 

2. Changing expectations

Today patients expect their scans and laboratory test results to be sent directly to monitors on the wall, or to the doctor’s tablet. In most cases, doctors and patients want fast access to patient data and their medical history and the days of waiting for results are over.

Delays receiving X-Ray, MRI, CT scan or ultrasound results or downtime of a refrigerator or any vital medical equipment can have a direct impact on patient care for one of New Zealand’s leading cancer treatment centres, Canopy Cancer Care. It was these risks that led the organisation to seek a proactive approach to managing its IT infrastructure.

Canopy operates four clinical treatment centres, dedicated to delivering world-class cancer care. For Canopy, there has always been a clear link between the role of data and IT in protecting and saving lives. By monitoring the uptime, quality, speed and reliability of their critical IT infrastructure they can be confident it will always run effectively both for the digital clinic and its daily operations.

 

3. Siloed data sources

Hospital IT infrastructure provides IT professionals with a unique challenge: they have the “traditional” IT elements to take care of, as well as the specialised healthcare systems with their associated data formats and communication protocols and also medical devices. All these elements and systems co-exist in the same infrastructure and this brings with it some degree of complexity.

 

A healthcare organisation’s IT data is typically transported via the hospital’s system infrastructure, which incorporates:

• HIS (Hospital Information System) – master data
  
• LIMS (Laboratory Information System) – laboratory data
  
• RIS (Radiology Information System) – radiology data
  
• PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) - Images generated from devices like X-Ray, MRT, ultrasound or video endoscopies.
  

With their siloed tech stacks, healthcare organisations are not running as efficiently as they should be. This not only affects the customer experience, but it also affects the insight and communication between internal departments. Classic IT systems and medical IT must work together seamlessly and need centralised monitoring to ensure they are operating well.

COVID’s positive effect

The pandemic has seen a shift to more interactions moving to virtual healthcare and considerations to how patient care is being delivered and is being reimagined. As this pandemic has shifted healthcare delivery to digital channels, it has become essential for any healthcare providers to remain on top of monitoring their complex IT infrastructures ensuring they are operating at their optimal level. This smart approach allows the medical teams to focus on delivering the highest quality frontline care with zero technical impediments.

Source: Daniel Sultana, APAC Regional Director - Paessler, 24 November 2020