Where To Begin In Creating A Connected Health Environment

By Susmit Pal, healthcare strategist, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Dell EMC

A connected health environment joins doctors to data, patients to healthcare providers, and practices to networks — all with the objective of delivering better health outcomes and more integrated care. Connected health is more than just wearable devices or one-on-one telehealth consults over distance. It is a web of intelligent communication and actionable information sharing, enabled by a fabric of technology in which people, processes, and devices are all capable of working together.

While the goal of connected health is one health systems, clinicians and administrators share, the steps to achieving that goal can be overwhelming to most facilities that are already struggling with stretched resources and tight budgets. New laws and reimbursement requirements, security and liability issues, integration and interoperability standards, and mountains of data coming in can make even the most stalwart advocate wonder if such a goal is achievable.

The good news is there are some incremental steps healthcare organizations can take to start down the path toward a connected healthcare environment — some of which can be done quickly and with minimal investment. Namely:

• Start small. Take stock of which technologies are in place and build out. According to a recent HIMSS 2016 Connected Health Survey, 52 percent of hospitals currently use three or more connected health technologies. For example, a hospital may have smart beds that detect when beds are occupied, but they are not using that real-time data to improve bed utilization and staff productivity.
• Analyze existing data pools and look for gaps and opportunities. Start by assembling a cross-functional team of key stakeholders to help identify where a small investment will yield measurable payback. Together, take a holistic look at existing technology environments and what data is being collected. Examine the system for gaps. Ask what data is missing. Identify sources for the data, who will be involved and how they will use the data. Consider the type of insights data could provide to help maximize existing resources. Using the smart bed illustration, let us assume a team uncovers data collected from the beds help reveal bed turnover rates from the highest volume departments. A system is then set up specific to those departments whereby an automated alert goes out to Housekeeping upon patient discharge. Not only are beds made available much more quickly, improving the hospital’s occupancy rate, but communication between Housekeeping and clinical staff improves and patient satisfaction increases due to lower wait times.
• Access security practices. Health organizations must think security first, last, and always. What are the data governance and security requirements? What users, applications, and devices will have access, and how will authentication and validation be managed? Security experts can help address these questions and recommend solutions and best practices, first with a review of existing security practices, then by assessing the impact of potential new solutions. They can guide health organizations design and then later deploy a multifaceted security approach with identity management, access management, encryption, proactive security analytics, and network security.
• Leverage partner relationships. Healthcare organizations should collaborate to create a Connected Health ecosystem, rather than trying to do it all. In addition to leveraging open standards-based, vendor-neutral architectural frameworks to connect with best-in-class healthcare solutions, organizations should look for technology partners with first-hand experience converging healthcare information technology and IoT, security, networking, and information management. Partners with relevant experience in other industries can also serve as models for healthcare organization and help save time, effort, and money. For example, data repositories in manufacturing might serve as a model for a patient-centric data repository or retailers keepings transactions secure in wireless environments can highlight best security practices and network deployments.

Although the path to connected health may sometimes seem complex, the goal is attainable and beneficial to healthcare systems, physicians, and patients and their families. By employing existing resources, people, data and networked devices, any healthcare organization can begin to move toward a connected health environment.