For many healthcare organizations, the last several months has been akin to a Greek tragedy. On any given day, the leading characters for many healthcare executives were some versions of Icarus, Sisyphus, and Soteria. However, as we approach spring, there are finally signs that the coronavirus is slowly retreating. There are three vaccines on the market. Vaccination programs are working somewhat, and in some parts of the world, things are starting to return to some semblance of normalcy. In many ways, how healthcare organizations handle the months post Covid-19 is going to be crucial for how they plan for the next pandemic. And unfortunately, there will be more pandemics.
As we collectively wake from the fog of the coronavirus, analyzing the data collected during the pandemic will be essential for determining future treatment guidelines, such as: what are the long-term effects of the coronavirus on marginalized populations, and what, if any, unintended adverse healthcare outcomes will impact those who got coronavirus. Additionally, the data collected from inoculations will be crucial for determining which vaccine had the greatest efficacy. During the pandemic, healthcare organizations had to decide what security processes they should implement to protect electronic private health information and how to provision hundreds of clinicians in near-real time. Post the pandemic, healthcare organizations will need to have an automated way of documenting of how they removed access for hundreds of contracted employees.
In some twisted fate of coincident, mHealth solutions that were previously deemed novel became essential for mobilizing large segments of the population. Folks were using mobile apps to book appointments for coronavirus testing and others were using apps to get appointments for inoculation. Candidly, many of us were using mobile apps and telehealth platforms for mental health check-ins and tune-ups.
In effect, coronavirus highlighted two significant trends: early adoption of health IT matters and automation is essential for driving operational and clinical efficiencies. Early adopters of health IT solutions had a slight, if not significant, advantage over late adopters. Healthcare organizations, who had invested in mHealth apps and collaborative IT solutions could quickly pivot and triage resources to go virtual. This ability to seamlessly go virtual was essential for patient care and operational efficiencies.
The use cases for adopting healthcare solutions with automation, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, has been proven with the manual IT war stories of the coronavirus. In the end, manual healthcare processes were simply not a match for the Covid-19 pandemic. Manual processes were slow, error prone, and time consuming…and the old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” proved to be a very painful lesson for many organizations.
As we move through 2021, the hard part begins. How do we give access to large groups of clinicians to study the global impact of the coronavirus? How do we ensure identity security for clinical collaboration? What mHealth solutions shall we keep? I suspect there will be healthy debate for several months to come. However, right now, most of us simply want to get back to hugging our family members, having dinner with our loved ones, and coffee with our frenemies.
About the author
Ms. Alison Haughton serves as a Senior Manager, Healthcare at SailPoint. Ms. Haughton focuses on health IT, population health management, identity governance, cloud, and digital care transformation. Ms. Haughton was one of the principal members of AT&T’s ForHealth practice and has served in a series of senior product marketing and leadership roles at IMS Health (now IQVIA), Harvard Medical School, Parexel, and a variety of early stage healthcare companies implementing mobile and cloud-based solutions.