Technology is transforming every industry and no more so than healthcare, in response to COVID-19 and the reliance on remote work and virtual visits. But as the sector becomes ever more digitalised, the number of applications for IT management to support only proliferate. Unless carefully managed, digitalisation is likely to lead to ‘IT sprawl’, with each new application contributing to an ever-expanding tangle of tech.
When organisations are running up to hundreds of software products, it is inevitable that inefficiencies become embedded. Information silos can be created by the introduction of each new piece of software leading to data becoming trapped or the writing of custom code being required for it to be released. This causes inefficiency, creates costs and leaves healthcare practitioners without the information they need to provide the best patient care.
Taming the content and information in your organisation can be a challenge. For instance, given the various communication protocols and the number of proprietary solutions in healthcare, compatibility of information across the organisation can be hard to achieve.
Managing Healthcare IT Sprawl
So, how do you properly manage your IT expansion to ensure existing and future technologies integrate seamlessly, with minimum disruption, and without the wholesale replacement of legacy systems?
A growing number of organisations, across public and private sectors, are turning to content services solutions, which provide the flexibility to bring unstructured content together and integrate it for use with your existing EPR, HRIS, ERP and AP systems.
Now, instead of unbridled IT sprawl, your unstructured data is consolidated on a single information platform that provides integrated workflow with core systems. Healthcare practitioners don’t have to hunt it down or guess where it might be. They don’t need to learn a new system since the data is integrated in the EPR they use daily. As a result, data is available anywhere it is needed in your enterprise, from the point of patient care to the back office for improved decisions.
And since the implementation takes months rather than years, it’s possible for a healthcare organisation to transform its operational capabilities quickly, without major implications for staffing or other costs.
So, if you are looking to introduce content services into your organisation, or replace one already there, which platform should you choose?
The right system will scale with your needs so it is most important to choose a platform that will be sufficiently flexible to cope with change. You should look for an organisation that continues to grow and update their platform.
It is also important that the platform has a broad base of customers, not just in healthcare, but in other sectors too. If there is widespread usage among all types and size of companies and organisations, you can be pretty sure the platform is adapting to market needs and is likely to do so in future. Since the evolution of software ultimately depends on the vendor, you want to ensure that content services is the core focus of their business.
For example, Hyland’s content services portfolio is continually updated and enhanced. With key updates and enhancements in each release, the solution will continue to accommodate the evolving needs of healthcare organisations, whether they’re very area-specific or right at the core of an organisation’s operations.
Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), for example, integrates OnBase with systems like Epic, to bring unstructured content into a single, complete, patient-centric record and to remove time-consuming processes, such as signing of multiple consent forms from the administrative burden.
GOSH also has the reassurance of knowing that they can add any number of applications for human resources, accounts payable, enterprise resource planning and more and incorporate existing integrations that Hyland has made to these systems. That presents a significant saving in time, cost and effort.
It also provides the freedom to update their platform as they wish, adding enhanced workflow, case management, robotic process automation, enterprise search and more to enhance practitioner and staff efficiency.
When the time comes to change out an EPR or consolidate the number of legacy systems, your content service platform and unstructured data can be integrated into any workflow.
You can be confident that with a cutting-edge content services platform in place, you will have the most cost-effective solution for managing the complexity of your IT sprawl.
Haroon Iqbal is Install Base Account Manager EMEA with Hyland Healthcare. www.hyland.com