How the Healthcare & Pharma Sector can benefit from integrating low-code technologies

Healthcare industry has witnessed significant transformation, especially post-pandemic. Customers are expecting instant at the same time quality solutions to their health problems. This has led to digital acceleration in the industry, which is striving to provide the right solution at the right time to its customers. In this interaction with CXOToday, Joe Paxton, Senior Vice President – Healthcare and Life Sciences at Persistent Systems highlights how the industry is leveraging technology to meet customer expectations. He also shares how their Digital Front Door (DFD) solution helps enhance operational efficiency for the stakeholders.

1. How has digital transformation shaped the healthcare industry in the last few years?

Digital transformation has generated new healthcare models or solution ecosystems. These solutions are being envisioned and implemented to allow providers to save time, help patients to take control of their health data, and enable other healthcare industry stakeholders to change their business models that include more personalized treatments. We are already witnessing positive impact of digital transformation among all the stakeholders of healthcare ecosystem. Following are some of the benefits:

• Benefits for patients – Empowering self-care, access to timely and convenient care, better experience
• Benefits for clinicians – Supporting faster clinical decision-making, reduced paperwork for repeatable tasks, reduced burnout
• Benefits for healthcare organizations – Integration of diverse information through interoperability, improved service efficiencies, opportunities for better business models

However, many healthcare organizations are at a nascent stage to define their digital transformation journey. There is a need to align and prioritize all the digital initiatives taking place in silos in different departments of healthcare organizations. Additionally, frequent checkpoints are required to measure the value of these initiatives. Well-defined, proven use cases, along with data integration, security, and governance will remain a top priority to build a digital transformation roadmap.

2. Please shed light on how the industry can adopt each of these technologies and what are its various applications- Hyper automation, RPA, and IBA

Significant portion of a healthcare professional’s tasks consist of repeated activities like follow- ups with patients, insurance eligibility verification, channel communication and updates in internal systems. Hyper automation solutions are designed to reduce human dependency on operations and save time. Up to 80% of operational tasks can be automated using RPA/IBA, AI and data solutions. For instance, automating business processes such as accessing patient information, capturing claims, coding and documentation, and prior authorization, etc. can substantially increase operational efficiency and accuracy. These processes can be further divided into sub-processes and then each sub-process can be automated. Automation can be achieved with implementation of multitude of bots which once configured, break down these tasks into much smaller repeatable ones and perform them at a scale.

Visibility into the effectiveness of payer-provider collaboration is also improving through the automation of outcomes reporting and value-based care performance analytics.

3.What is the need for digital front door in healthcare and how does it make a difference?

Care delivery channel has substantially transformed post-pandemic, it is moving from traditional delivery centers to patient convenient channels. In addition, other pressures such as declining margins, shifting regulatory landscape, competition from non-traditional players and rise of value-based care payment models make it imperative for primary providers and payers to invest in digital solutions that will reduce costs and improve consumer experience. Our Digital Front Door (DFD) solution meets these goals.

DFD provides a digital platform that seamlessly connects patients with providers across the entire care journey on any channel or use case. From patient outreach, virtual triage, patient navigation, and virtual care, it’s the solution which translates to patients receiving the right care at the right time.

We believe personalization will be the next phase of evolution in the DFD solutions. Healthcare consumers are no different than retail customers: they want to make well-informed choices about the care they receive and expect digitization to be a core part of this engagement. At Persistent, we have developed a patient engagement solution that personalizes each patient experience at different touchpoints, as per their convenience and needs.

4. What does the future of the healthcare industry in India look like with reference to tech?

Several technological innovations are evolving in Indian health ecosystem, which are helping patients as well as the healthcare staff. The four essential technology blocks that will play a major role in global as well as Indian healthcare industry are:

• Hyper automation – Up to 80% of operational tasks can be automated using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI and data. For instance, we can send a text message inviting a patient to complete their pre-registration for an upcoming appointment. The patient can complete the process online at their own convenience.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Using AI/ML technologies such as OCR, IDP and similar cognitive features, many tasks useful in decision-making and documentation such as reading any medical document, understanding, responding meaningfully without human intervention can be done conveniently.
• Conversational Bots – From enhancing patient experience and helping medical professionals, to improving healthcare processes and unlocking actionable insights, chatbots are already finding applications in various clinical and non-clinical processes.
• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) – Multiple applications of AR and VR in form of medical training, physical therapy, robotic surgery, etc. are already in practice in the industry. For instance, explaining how the operations will be performed or which steps a patient should take for more effective recovery with the help of AR/VR can improve doctor-patient interactions.