The healthcare industry’s rapid digitalization only underlines the ever-growing necessity for seamless and secure data sharing and handling among healthcare organizations.
With no sign of this digitalization slowing down any time soon, patients and medical practitioners alike expect hyper-efficient information sharing, with instant access to health results and records. In fact, according to a recent report from McKinsey, the e-health market is projected to hit $109 billion by 2027.
However, concerns about security and compliance around data handling continue to be a sore spot for the industry.
Enter EiPaaS (Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service), an increasingly innovative solution that’s revolutionizing technological integrations and data management without compromising compliance. Let’s explore how this solution is redefining data processes and how to successfully integrate EiPaaS into your organization to achieve economies of scale.
The Business Case For EiPaaS
EiPaaS is a cloud-native integration solution that helps businesses manage processes of connecting applications, data, and services more coherently. Specifically, scalability is one of the most significant benefits EiPaaS brings to healthcare businesses. Due to its cloud-based software, it augments an organization’s speed to market compared to existing technology.
Moreover, EiPaaS strengthens an organization’s market agility as the solution adapts to its needs, whether that’s during periods of growth or stagnation. To illustrate, EiPaaS software automatically adjusts to manage higher or lower data volumes without sacrificing on performance. Specifically, EiPaaS is helping organizations achieve a more integrated, cohesive data-handling system without needing to outsource hardware, reaping both budget and operational benefits.
Ensuring coherent data handling and sharing continues to be an Achilles heel for many businesses within the healthcare industry. The solution streamlines operations by eliminating data silos and facilitating seamless data exchange, even among legacy systems.
This is all happening while staying on top of data security concerns, as EiPaaS platforms are compliant with stringent regulatory requirements such as those of HIPAA. EiPaaS achieves this through secure data sharing and encryption to deliver protected digital services for healthcare businesses.
Key Benefits
Various tools and technologies, such as user-friendly interfaces, encryption, security audit trails, and automation, are utilized in EiPaaS systems to simplify integration processes. Accelerators are pre-built, orchestrated or point-to-point integration templates that can be used to connect a system. They are based on the most common tech stack needs, for instance clinical tasks like managing patient health records, patient portals, billing systems, and more. Accelerators can significantly reduce the effort required to build an integration, which was previously a significant challenge, particularly when dealing with existing legacy systems and complex processes.
Additionally, EiPaaS platforms are able to track data sources and applications for any changes. Once a change has been picked up by the system, EiPaaS technology will automatically update the change across the entire database to ensure that everything is synchronized. For example, a hospital amending its appointment scheduling could reflect this change across its digital environment without the necessity of updating every individual interface. This helps organizations achieve more robust and seamless digital processes.
Utilizing EiPaaS in daily operations may be a daunting task for some, such as hospital operations managers and record keepers, who are not as code-savvy. Fortunately, the software features drag-and-drop no-code configuration tools that are designed to be optimally user-friendly, eliminating the need for coding from scratch.
Platforms also include API management tools to ensure secure and efficient data transmission. This enables EiPaaS solutions to power data consistency and interoperability by aligning and converting data in different formats.
Finally, EiPaaS technology offers a real-time analytics dashboard to give organizations a clear-cut view of how processes are performing and spot potentially problematic patterns that need to be addressed. This helps businesses ensure prompt responses in case of data issues while continuously improving processes.
How To Maximize Benefits Through Strategic Implementation
When introducing a new technology into a legacy system, it’s vital to assess the current landscape and gauge what’s missing in existing processes. Hospitals and medical centers are dealing with fast-paced situations where lives are on the line. Data silos and a lack of connectivity between disparate systems and applications can result in information mismanagement, reaping devastating consequences for patient handling and delivering efficient quality care.
With the proper implementation strategy, healthcare providers can make the most of how EiPaaS elevates existing processes to create an optimally unified, succinct, and effective digital environment to manage patient data, diagnostic information, revenue cycles, and more.
Before selecting an EiPaaS software, start off by setting objectives. Examples of these include ensuring more effective billing and insurance claims handling, reducing time to access diagnostics, and better appointment scheduling. This will help guide the right game plan so an organization can unlock the most benefits out of the solution. By outlining objectives, organizations are also able to set a blueprint of metrics to measure performance. Moreover, establishing clear, actionable goals for implementing EiPaaS will empower business leaders to opt for the right EiPaaS technology that seamlessly aligns with their broader strategic goals.
Once objectives and benchmarks have been defined, the next important step is to build a strong data governance framework. This is crucial for ensuring compliance with the rigorous regulatory requirements around data handling and sharing, particularly when it comes to highly sensitive patient information. It’s paramount that organizations keep pace with any changes in regulations, such as the UK’s recent bill to replace GDPR following Brexit. With the help of EiPaaS providers, healthcare organizations can more easily stay on top of these.
Constructing this framework involves a number of factors, such as defining data ownership of healthcare providers, third-party vendors, and other relevant stakeholders and establishing standards around data quality and sharing. A critical point here is to select an EiPaaS solution that provides a full chain of data custody. This not only means knowing what data is involved but also where it comes from, who’s been involved with handling it, and when it was received.
Accordingly, organizations can then move on to selecting the right EiPaaS provider. Select a provider whose offerings align with your organization’s needs. When choosing a potential vendor, it’s critical to consider factors such as scalability, security features, ease of integration with existing technology, and support services.
When an EiPaaS solution has been selected and successfully integrated, make sure your team keeps a pulse on performance and data analytics. Continuously monitor the solution’s performance against KPIs, such as speed of data handling and scalability metrics, and make necessary adjustments. Regularly review and refine your integration strategy based on performance data. Additionally, leverage data analytics to gain insights into your current systems, identify integration opportunities, and monitor the effectiveness of the EiPaaS solution.
To further maximize benefits, ensure the EiPaaS implementation is achieving scalability—this means that the solution is flexible in accommodating future business growth and technological needs as they arise.
Throughout the process, it’s also important to keep stakeholders, such as team leaders and employees working with the technology, engaged. This includes educating staff, such as administrative teams, on how to optimally use EiPaaS, to ensure better patient outcomes, communication handling and enhanced decision making.
Additionally, teams should be regularly reminded of best practices around data management and handling. This could be in the form of team workshops and providing a company-wide checklist so people know what needs to be done and what to look out for.
With these points in mind, business leaders can pave the way for better data management and information sharing, while staying on top of strict regulations. Moreover, by achieving these outcomes, EiPaaS helps healthcare providers offer more seamless digital experiences for practitioners to continue delivering quality patient care.
Scott Sirdevan
Scott Sirdevan is Co-founder and CEO of Vorro.
