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Interoperability
What to look when you pick a care orchestration software
In this blog post, we'll present the main requirements you should look for when picking new software for your hospital to enhance a successful implementation, the likelihood of adoption by clinical teams and its impact on efficiency, capacity, and effectiveness metrics.
Matilde Ferreira
May 14, 2023 · 7 min read
Patient care is a complex process that involves multiple healthcare providers, care settings, and interventions. In this respect, care orchestration is an approach that aims to improve the coordination and management of patient care by leveraging technology and data analytics. It is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare industry, as it streamlines clinical workflows, reduces administrative burden, and enables more personalized care, while helping to drive efficiencies and improve the quality of care.
A care orchestrator software is designed to provide multidisciplinary care teams – that can work in different healthcare institutions -, with a single view of a patient's health status, which allows them to make more informed decisions and provide more effective care. It can be defined as:
“an extent to which the technology and process enabled platform creation increases the growth and synchronous transmission of information and service-flow in the system connecting interactive partners in transparent value-adding conducive environment using real-time digital technology adoption” 1
However, plugging new software in the Hospital Information System (HIS) is not a bed of roses. Limited usefulness, poor usability, challenges with the usage of multiple systems, lack of customizability, siloed data, privacy concerns, and lack of standards are frequently mentioned as barriers for the sustainability of digital health interventions. At stake is the viability of the projects due to lack of engagement and adoption by clinical teams.2,3
Clinical teams’ resistance: that’s all about time and perceived usefulness
When it comes to understand clinical teams’ reluctance to new technologies, resistance to change in established routines, hesitance due to patient safety issues, concerns for the quality of care, opposition to technology itself, tension between standardization and autonomy or independency, are frequently cited on the literature.4,5,6
As we perceive it, such complex problem, can be wrapped in two words: time and usefulness. Clinical teams are typically very busy and have a lot of demands on their time, so any software that is introduced needs to be user-friendly, seamless, and not add additional stress to their workload.
In other words, any technological solution should present clear benefits when it comes to save time and clearly solve a pre-identified need. There is no room for any doubt or ambiguity, and even less to implement something that adds no value.
Tip: UpHill will be hosting a live webinar - Interoperability that works: making healthcare easier. Register to understand how our software overcomes the most common challenges faced by IT teams and allows them to reconcile clinical teams' needs, the best technological practices, and standards, while using the HIS infrastructure.
5 tips to keep in mind when looking for a care orchestration software
1. Real-time data integration and analysis
Care orchestration software should be capable of integrating real-time data from multiple sources, such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), medical devices, and wearables. The software should be able to analyze this data to provide a comprehensive view of a patient's health status, including medical history, current conditions, and ongoing treatments. By doing so, care teams can make informed decisions and provide more personalized care to patients, according to their needs in real time.
2. Collaborative care coordination
Care orchestration software should facilitate collaborative care coordination among healthcare teams and providers. The software should enable providers to communicate with each other, share information, and coordinate care plans in real-time. This will help to reduce medical errors, anticipate decisions, improve patient outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction.
3. Seamless interoperability
Care orchestration software should be interoperable with existing hospital infrastructure. This means that it should be able to integrate with EHRs, medical devices, and other healthcare applications, and be able to:
- Aggregate and analyze data from different sources, while exchanging it in a meaningful way, throughout standardized catalogs, such as LOINC, SNOMED-CT, and ICD-10 - (semantic interoperability);
- Exchange data through standardized methods and formats, including the technical aspects of data exchange, such as data transport, data format, and data validation (technical interoperability);
- Interpret the exchanged data, understanding its structure, using standardized format, such as XML or HL7FHIR (syntactic interoperability);
Interoperability is essential for ensuring that care teams have access to the most up-to-date patient information, without workload duplication, which is critical for providing high-quality care.
4. Security and compliance
Care orchestration software should meet the highest standards of security and compliance. This means that the software should be designed with robust security features to protect patient data from cyber threats, and comply with HIPAA regulations, which set strict standards for the collection, use, and disclosure of patient health information.
5. Productivity enhancing features and user-friendly interface
Healthcare days are fast paced; clinical teams are often under pressure to manage a large number of patients, handle administrative tasks, and collaborate within more and more complex teams among different providers. A care orchestration software that simplifies and streamlines workflows, while providing tools to enhance clinical teams focus on what matters – highly differentiated tasks and the patients that most need, make a significant difference in hospitals’ capacity and the quality of care provided to patients.
Looking forward to dive deeper on this topic? Reach out to our team to discuss how our software overcomes the most common challenges faced by IT teams and allows them to reconcile clinical teams' needs, the best technological practices, and standards, while using the HIS infrastructure.
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