Testing the Future of Healthcare Interoperability
When seemingly disparate things can come together, the results are often that much better. Like a soccer team that draws players from different backgrounds—some coaching efforts can bring out the best from each individual to form a winning squad.
We can find this kind of symbiosis in healthcare interoperability.
In a recent joint announcement from Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce, the companies stated,
The healthcare industry is at a turning point. Patients and providers are eager for advances in value-based care, patient engagement, and machine learning as they look to usher in a new era of constantly-improving health outcomes and well-being. Interoperability is key to removing the barriers between the healthcare industry and the future it seeks to build.”
These technology giants are not alone in advocating for healthcare interoperability.
- The need to curb healthcare costs
- Increasing government regulations designed to enhance patient care and safety
- Growing focus on patient-centric care.
Creating a unified environment for health data remains a top priority for global healthcare organizations.
Benefits of Healthcare Interoperability
#1 Higher Physician Productivity
Streamlined healthcare data sharing between various health systems is key to a successful transformation towards value-based care.
Recent research found that around about 7 out of 10 U.S. healthcare organizations still use faxes to transmit medical records. Physicians often waste their time on administrative tasks like receiving documents, filling out paper forms, searching for medical history, and more. With interoperability, physicians can eliminate time wasted on manually translating information from paper to EHR at every visit and provide patients with faster, more accurate treatment.
#2 Better Patient Outcome
According to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins, over 40% of medical error deaths were preventable in the states, which represents a series of "systemic problems, including poorly coordinated care, fragmented insurance networks, the absence or underuse of safety nets, and other protocols, in addition to unwarranted variation in physician practice patterns that lack accountability.”
With a secure, interoperable system, physicians can easily access real-time patient data to gain a more accurate, holistic view of patients and deliver seamless care collaborations to achieve better patient outcomes.
#3 Enhanced data privacy and security
With new regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and the ONC Final Rule, more than ever it is crucial that healthcare organizations safeguard personal information and address their risks and legal responsibilities in relation to data privacy and security.
Today’s healthcare interoperability solutions fully leverage HIPAA-compliant environments to ensure patient data is shared securely. By enhancing data governance practices- how data is being accessed, used, transferred, and stored - healthcare organizations can ensure that sensitive patient information is appropriately used, disclosed, accessed, altered or deleted.
#4 Reduced healthcare costs
System interoperability is estimated to save the U.S. healthcare system more than $30 billion a year, mostly due to reduced duplication of lab and imaging orders. One system, managed by a smaller, more agile team is more efficient than the disparate, disconnected systems deployed across multiple vendors.
Embrace Healthcare Interoperability with Eggplant
In order for interoperability initiatives to be successful, it’s essential that solution providers and healthcare organizations address current challenges to accelerate digital transformation and enhance their data-sharing capabilities.
With software involved in every facet of a hospital visit—from the moment a patient is admitted through to diagnosis, treatment, prescription and discharge—testing this complex, the interconnected environment can seem like a tall order. But with life or death healthcare decisions hinging on the performance and reliability of digital healthcare systems, organizations simply have no choice but to get it right.
That’s where Eggplant comes in.
We work with leading healthcare institutions like the Cleveland Clinic, UNC Health Care and Oxford University Hospitals, as well as health information technology companies like Cerner and Epic, to ensure that mission-critical healthcare technology functions optimally and works as intended when connected to the myriad other systems in the modern healthcare setting.
Eggplant Test provides AI-driven continuous intelligent test automation, enabling healthcare companies to expand automation beyond test execution to the full testing process. This allows them to spot and address bugs, compatibility issues, accessibility problems and other factors that could lead to an outage or performance challenges long before they have the chance to impact the delivery of care. And while ensuring high-quality patient care is certainly the top priority for all of our healthcare customers, Eggplant also helps companies address additional industry-specific requirements.
See it in action: Automation Intelligence for Any EMR
https://info.eggplantsoftware.com/automation-intelligence-for-any-emr
For example, privacy is a perennial concern for all healthcare industry stakeholders with new regulations issued on an ongoing basis and hefty fines levied against those not in compliance. Eggplant is uniquely suited to address these essential privacy concerns because we are the industry’s only completely non-invasive testing tool, which means our technology sits outside of the application and provides comprehensive test coverage without having to understand the nature of what is being tested. Our Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for healthcare also offers privacy benefits and drives further gains in the form of reducing errors and freeing up human testers to focus on more strategic initiatives.
The letter from Amazon et al. states, “
We believe it is important to work with stakeholders across the ecosystem — patients, providers, insurers, researchers, tech providers — to unlock important data and enable patients and their care teams to derive insights when it is needed most.”
Progress towards true healthcare interoperability takes a whole village — and it is costly and inconvenient. But it’s worth the universal effort.
Curious about how you can drive interoperability across your healthcare system and beyond? Read our latest eBook on why AI-driven test automation is key to achieving the interoperability benefits outlined above.