Does every Cloud have a silver lining?

eHealthNews.nz: Infrastructure

Wednesday, 2 June 2021

Share |

FEATURE - Industry Innovation Article – Spark Health

How to ensure a successful business transformation, leveraging Cloud technologies.
As a sector, we have talked about developing a more joined up health sector for some time, in many forums and platforms from health strategies, sector reviews, conferences, and just in our own board meetings. Across all these conversations we wholeheartedly agree that the health system of the future should be one where all health care providers work together to create a seamless service, designed around its communities, rather than through the traditional model where responsibility for care is handed from one organisation to another, often in a disjointed way that mirrors a game of Chinese whispers where the person at the end doesn’t quite get the whole message.

Cloud as an enabler
Cloud is vital enabler for health organisations of all shapes and sizes, to improve patient care and get more out of every dollar spent.

The New Zealand government is driving the use of cloud services across all public sectors including healthcare. They understand that adopting public cloud and other cloud services will reduce technology debt and drive innovation, which in turn will provide better digital services to the NZ public.

Implementing the rapid business and technological transformation required to achieve this desired future is easier said than done, and often the expertise and experience is not available to effectively manage an implementation like this—often fraught with unexpected challenges and difficulties. However, delaying transformation will just exacerbate these problems.

While Doc Emmett from Back to the Future, famously said “where we are going, we don’t need roads”, this may be the case for the future of the health sector as moving to a cloud-based technology can enable your people to come up with ideas that we haven’t even considered yet. However, as we are starting out, a roadmap outlining some of the challenges and difficulties and how to plan for or avoid them is something that is needed and appreciated by our customers and partners in order to be able to reach those futuristic visions.

But First ask yourself Why Move to the Cloud?
Core to any organisation making a commitment to move to Cloud is first asking the question: “Why are we moving to the cloud?” Without understanding the “why”, the cloud strategy and approach becomes tactical and will struggle to engage the entire organisation to make the changes to the way they operate that are required to make this move a success.

Transforming your business by leveraging the capabilities of public cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform provides multiple benefits. These benefits may not apply to every health organisation, as each is different and will have different objectives. The most important step is to first understand these objectives and weigh them against the perceived benefits and costs. This information can then be used to build a robust business case to inform the financial investment and change management requirements for business transformation enabled by cloud services.

The scope, depth and pace of adoption are factors to the level of success of a cloud adoption strategy. The benefits may only be realised at a certain point within the transformation and may also require supporting pieces of work to be completed before benefit realisation is achieved.

Below is a summary of the benefits that can be realised from a Cloud transformation:

[Click to view larger image]

Are you Ready for the Cloud?
Before you begin your digital health transformation journey, here is a high-level readiness checklist that you can run through to use as an initial guide to get a view of what needs to be done to achieve a successful cloud implementation.

[Click to view larger image]

Where to start? Creating a Roadmap to the Future
On paper, digital health business and technology transformation sounds like an easy enough concept – harness existing technological innovations to enhance the health and well-being of individuals. The reality, however, is something more complex and extensive given health systems across the world are complex adaptive systems in themselves. With a vast scope of services, the term ‘digital health’ encompasses everything from interconnected patient data systems, digital health records, ingestible sensors, online testing, telehealth services, healthcare apps, IoT wearable gadgets and from electronic records to robotic caregivers. Additionally, various patient management applications and cloud services have permeated the healthcare sector at a rapid pace with its benefits and challenges.

The goals of digital health are to get better health outcomes at a lower cost, with more efficient use of resources. The journey to achieve these outcomes are complex and diverse, including better patient record keeping, speed to diagnosis, utilisation of machine learning and AI capabilities, prevention of disease, personalised medicine, and interconnectivity between patients and providers. These initiatives benefit both the health organisation and their patients – patients feel in control of their health, technology reduces costs of operation and broadens accessibility; overall the healthcare system runs in a smooth low-friction way.

These goals cannot be achieved without the right combination of interconnected technology, and often without the integration and introduction of cloud technology. CxO’s, clinical and business leaders in healthcare are working towards the provision of cloud services across the country - whether this is ‘cloud native’ or hybrid. However, there is commonly confusion on where to start, how to roadmap and what is the most suitable budget.

Establishment of an effective architecture for your Cloud is vital which is supported by a strategically selected team to support its implementation.

Common Pitfalls for the Healthcare Sector
While there are numerous benefits and drivers to prioritise moving your business operations to a cloud-based platform, there are challenges and issues that arise when making the transition. Taking the time to build a documented blueprint on how to transition to this environment helps to establish a strong foundation that will enable the achievement of the benefits of cloud without suffering many of the pitfalls.

There is not one clear set of considerations or guidelines for cloud adoption for the health sector. Depending on if the entity is government, private sector or non-profit; different considerations and controls may apply. Below is a list of reasons that cloud transitions don’t achieve the desired levels of success:
• Lack of Training and Support
• Lack of Compelling Business Case
• Inadequate Roadmap and Plan
• Interdependencies and Interconnectivity of the environment not understood.

It takes a village
As the famous saying goes, “it takes a village to a raise a child.” It also takes a whole company to have a successful cloud adoption.

Even though cloud is commonly associated with technology, it is much more than servers, storage and networks.

It is a carefully choreographed set of activities, among a number of different stakeholders, that enables the organisation to derive value from the latest technological revolution cloud brings with it.

For a successful Cloud transformation a cross functional, multi-skill team is required with the right blend of experts to ensure that the migration is not only successful but that the changes and benefits of Cloud are realised at the end of it all. Roles from programme management, human resources, finance through to procurement and legal specialists will all be needed at some stage during your journey .

Solutions offered by Spark Health
• Health Cloud Reference Architecture

Spark Health powered by the experts and Microsoft certified cloud partners at Leaven offer a Health Cloud Reference Architecture that has been designed specifically for the NZ health and life sciences sector. This architecture provides a public cloud blueprint, based on industry-leading best practice and the specific – and unique - requirements of the NZ health system. We have also taken the extra step to validate this blueprint with our Amazon Web Services and Leaven, providing you with the confidence to build securely taking into account core success factors to enable and drive your digital transformation.

• Cloud Architecture Review
• Homeland Cloud
• Homeland Government Cloud
• Polaris
• Managed Cloud Service (MCS) Cloud Monitoring and Security

To get your free HCRA e-book and start your transformation journey email hello@sparkhealth.nz

Hear more on this topic at the free eHealthTV webinar 'Does every cloud have a silver lining?' on June 16, 12.30pm. Read about the panellists and register here.

Jason Perry, Product Director Spark Health
Jason is specialised at leading large and complex implementations from business case through to implementation, for a range of regional solutions, strategy and performance development and national programmes. He has spent the last 15 years primarily within the NZ health sector and has a strong knowledge of the issues and challenges that exist to adopting new ways of working enabled by modern digital services and is excited about working on supporting the new solutions being designed for the health sector.