Digital-first approach needed to relieve staff pressure
Monday, 5 June 2023
SECTOR UPDATE - InterSystems  There are capacity and workforce shortages everywhere in healthcare. In May 2022, for example, ambulance paramedics waited an extra 3000 hours to offload patients into New Zealand emergency departments.
Many countries are looking overseas for staff, but that only exports the problem. For example, New Zealand’s plan to offer residency to foreign nurses made the news in the Philippines, where only 172,589 out of 617,898 nurses are employed locally.
Not surprisingly, staff burnout is a critical issue. It could get even worse. An Australian white paper estimates health workers would need to deliver four times current service levels by 2050 to meet forecasted needs.
Can productivity be boosted to meet this demand? We saw how the pandemic forced providers to embrace digital technology like telehealth. But while it allowed care delivery to continue and improved accessibility, it didn’t improve clinicians’ productivity.
According to Gartner, real productivity improvements require a digital-first model that “prioritises digital engagement and the use of digital products and service throughout the entirety of an individual’s health journey.”
That makes data sharing critical. For example, solutions leveraging the HL7® FHIR® interoperability standard make providers more efficient by streamlining business processes such as patient authorisations.
Other technologies can extend caregiver capabilities. But, while teleradiology, remote ICU monitoring, and AI for pathology and imaging interpretation are widely used, organisations are still slow to adopt AI applications with the biggest productivity potential.
One barrier is the need to embed AI applications seamlessly in clinician workflows. Another is the incredibly high standard for evaluating AI models and the data quality that went into them.
For that, we need clean, healthy data. Yet one study found only 20% of healthcare executives fully trust their data, making it difficult to increase productivity through data-backed solutions.
One approach to improving trust in data is a smart data fabric that unifies distributed data and delivers real-time insights with business intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning capabilities.
On a bright note, an InterSystems survey found that 74% of ANZ healthcare executives are confident smart data fabrics would benefit their organisations, with 44% currently evaluating their use.
With a framework to support data-backed solutions, organisations have a fighting chance to improve productivity to address staff shortages and clinician burnout. Doing nothing is no longer an alternative.
About the author
Emeline Ramos is a Physician Executive at InterSystems, a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability and speed problems. Emeline promotes excellence in healthcare by providing clinical leadership for the strategic planning, management, integration and implementation of health information systems.
Source: InterSystems media release
Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.
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