Health care costs in this country continue to rise. According to a study by the Peterson Center on Health Care and the Kaiser Family Foundation, health care spending will reach $3.8 trillion in 2019, at $11,582 per person.
By 2028, spending is projected to rise to $6.2 trillion, or $18,000 per person. These increases are occurring as the COVID-19 pandemic highlights systemic inequities in health equity and how difficult it is for the least advantaged citizens to access quality care.
Technology has lowered costs in many industries, but this has not happened in healthcare. Due to the monolithic architecture of legacy EHRs, they limit the adoption of new technologies because the maintenance required to update these systems is not cost-effective.
These proprietary systems are hardware-centric and do not use platform-as-a-service, capital expenditure for the cloud’s operational cost potential. Less expensive, more flexible solutions will be available to improve health equity and efficiency in service delivery, helping to address community gaps in care delivery.
Technology must reduce the impact of social determinants on health care because of new technologies that provide more practical insights today. Cloud computing, wearables and emerging 5G technologies offer an opportunity to leverage technology like no other industry – to market basic services and reduce the costs of specialty care. A new approach to care delivery is needed, one that prioritizes better data analytics and more robust telehealth capabilities. This is a way to attack the health equity challenge.
A cloud approach unlocks flexibility and value.
Legacy EHR systems have historically exerted vicarious control over hospital budgets, depriving them of other important IT priorities. These monolithic systems have high acquisition costs, constant maintenance costs. Increased cybersecurity investments are needed to protect these on-premise systems.
These are all reasons why the medical field lags behind other industries when it comes to moving data and resources to the cloud. The flexibility of the cloud provides unlimited computing power that can be billed on a per-use basis, secure platforms for cloud-native application development, and a shared responsibility model for security. All of this creates savings that can be used to provide better health equity.
A shared security model allows most of the maintenance and monitoring features to be maintained by the commercial cloud provider rather than by the hospital or IT staff. If a medical facility doesn’t move existing applications to the cloud — known as “lift and shift” — but rather to produce development, security and operations (DevSecOps) — cloud-native solutions — more resources can be diverted.
In today’s highly digitized economy, efficiency is key. Organizations that cannot provide up-to-date services and continuously introduce new features and new capabilities will quickly become ineffective. Other industries have been faster than the medical vertical to adopt the DevOps application development model. Typically, the focus is on building new capabilities and functionality, with security a low priority.
Obviously, this is not only unwise, but potentially very dangerous for medical devices. Faster application development and better security are not mutually exclusive. DevSecOps integrates security-as-code early in the development process and provides ways to continuously enforce security policies throughout development and into deployment and operations. This “left shift” strategy is quickly becoming commonplace in other industries, and healthcare organizations may follow suit by moving to the cloud.
FHIR Compliant APIs to make better use of patient data
APIs based on Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resources (FHIR) can further understand and configure hospital systems. FHIR acts as the connective tissue between all entities that need access to patient information. When this sharing is done through open APIs, the right information is available at the right time and the right treatment decisions can be made.
FHIR APIs enforce consistency in data standards by providing ease of data analysis and relevant hospital metrics. Using these APIs, hospitals can create their own custom EHRs without having to re-engineer the entire system. You can easily add or remove other systems for a compatible ecosystem that goes beyond EHR data. FHIR APIs allow this type of cross-system collaboration within facilities and across clinical systems.
Clearly, more abundant and higher-quality patient data will fuel better decision-making, allowing institutions to target care where and when it’s most needed. Better data leads to better population health management, allowing care providers to target the most high-risk and often underserved patients. Remote patient monitoring, powered by increasingly convenient wearable technology, could be a game changer here.
RPM enables on-demand patient monitoring and 24/7 data access to provide clinicians with actionable insights. Finally, caregivers and clinicians can use data analysis and be proactive rather than reactive in the treatment of chronic diseases. This positions the facility well to adopt a value-based care model, reduce costs, and reach previously underserved patients.
It’s long past time for the healthcare industry to benefit from technology instead of reducing service delivery. Inefficiencies that are never overlooked in other verticals are still common in health care. If we don’t take these steps, we won’t be able to address inequities in care. Unnecessary spending on the wrong technologies has gotten us into our current situation, and smarter spending on technology can steer us in the right direction.
Meggie Soliman Director, Strategic Innovations, Applications at DSS, Inc. Meggie has been in the healthcare technology industry for over 15 years. She has degrees in bioinformatics, big pharma, clinical research and healthcare IT as well, and a Masters of Science in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She is also a certified blockchain expert. Maggie serves on the Tech Hub South Florida Healthcare and Life Sciences Task Force as well as Chair of the Healthcare and Life Sciences Committee of the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce.
