3 Ways Technology is Reshaping Healthcare Operations

Organizations stand on the precipice of an exhilarating paradigm shift in healthcare data, thanks to the groundbreaking innovations and cultural normalization of large language models (LLMs). In the coming months—rather than years—healthcare will experience significant tectonic shifts in the challenges it faces. This shift is driven by a new wave of technology-driven renaissance that enhances our ability to make rapid, informed decisions and distills  wealth of data into valuable insights. 

Emerging technologies are here to provide the lifeline that healthcare needs to combat the significant staff burnout resulting from the post-COVID period, offering faster and smarter decision-making that turns the data deluge into actionable wisdom. Let’s dive into the heart of how tech is revolutionizing patient outreach, treatment, and outcomes!

Patient Outreach

The digital age is here, and it’s transforming patient outreach from the ground up! Forget the days of painstaking communication barriers – the future is digital and it’s collaborative. AI and automation are not just changing the game, they’re redefining it, ushering in an era of heightened patient engagement. What’s the secret? Let’s unravel the tech threads:

AI-powered patient segmentation: No more shots in the dark—customized algorithms are revolutionizing patient care by identifying those in need and automating outreach. It’s like shining a light on patient populations, uncovering hidden trends and characteristics, and supercharging targeted communication. 

Revamped referral management: Say goodbye to administrative headaches! Harnessing the power of data integration, providers can now swiftly connect patients to in-network specialists, accelerating the referral process, and making healthcare more efficient. All of this while being informed by predictive outcomes based on a mesh of referral patterns and clinical outcomes.

Smarter patient marketing: Predictive analytics models, powered by massive cloud-scale computing, are the new secret weapon. They churn data into foresight, enabling organizations to optimize marketing efforts and predict future needs with stunning accuracy. Cloud-based predictive analytics models leverage data mining to determine the future cost of patient acquisition. For example, this technology can now use demographic data to predict the viability of new office locations and staffing needs based on patient visit trends. 

Engaging messaging: Welcome to the era of two-way communication in the healthcare sector! Patients can now manage their health through the familiar comfort of text messaging, ushering in a whole new level of engagement. LLMs can augment front-line staff by answering common questions and being intelligent enough to know when to shift to human contact.

Sure, there are hurdles, like finding the right communication method for different age groups/demographics/disease pathways, but with the tech at our disposal, providers are more equipped than ever to tackle these challenges. 

Patient Treatment

The tech magic continues to work wonders when it comes to diagnosis and treatment by blending the power of medical textbooks and guidelines with patient-centric data:

Superpowered early detection: AI’s pattern recognition is akin to having a second pair of eyes, providing an invaluable backup for radiologists and supporting early disease detection. Multi-modal models are able to merge structured and unstructured text about a patient with medical images resulting in extremely precise predictions.

Seamless care coordination: Advanced health clouds function like a virtual roundtable, bringing together care teams, patients, and facilities for barrier-free collaboration. Care teams, patients, and facilities can now view integrated EHRs as a part of a system built for collective problem-solving efforts.

Optimized transitional care management: The period following an inpatient stay is a critical transitional time for care teams to assess patient performance. Tech-powered dashboards are becoming our go-to for tracking patient progress post-discharge, helping to reduce readmission rates. 

Effective treatment is due in part to the rise of Health Information Exchange (HIE) which enhances systems interoperability. HIE impacts how patient information is shared and eliminates the need for patients to carry records from appointment to appointment. Instead, this information can now be easily accessed, decreasing the need for readmissions and duplication. Additionally, patients can now experience improved diagnoses as providers have access to all needed information.

Patient Outcomes

The tech revolution isn’t just transforming processes, it’s generating waves of positive outcomes.  New operations based on the technology outlined in the above sections have changed traditional healthcare processes for the better. Here are a few examples of their impact:

Empowered decision-making: In the past, siloed systems made it challenging for patients and providers to reach detailed, evidence-based recommendations. However, the push toward integration has enabled patients to partner with clinicians rather than rely on their diagnosis alone. Now, patients are now at the heart of decision-making, partnering with clinicians for evidence-based healthcare decisions. 

Expanded health access: Virtual care and telemedicine are breaking down geographical barriers, providing quality care at an accelerated pace to those who need it most. Video consultations, online assessments, and appointment tracking enable patients to receive quality care at a faster rate. Virtual care is also essential for patients with mobility issues who have limited access to reliable transportation. 

Novel intervention: Rapidly combine traditional opportunity identification in data analytics with social determinants of health data to identify and monitor novel interventions and care pathways. For example, systemic factors like food insecurity and addiction can now be tracked for targeted interventions. 

While this tech-powered future is exhilarating, it requires careful planning. To execute your plan, Arcadia’s comprehensive list of analytics companies recommends reflecting on your organization’s long-term goals to nail down your desired outcomes before selecting an analytics solution. 

These goals must support the research, cost, and time needed to integrate analytics into your organization’s workflows. From there, you can research companies that can help you achieve your goals and offer access to ongoing support. 

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Tech has provided exciting tools to reshape healthcare for the better. Now care teams can tackle clinical and administrative tasks with efficiency, leaving them with more time to focus on their patient needs. Patients too can now take steps toward greater shared decision-making as they benefit from enhanced data sharing and data quality.  

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About the Author: Brendan Smith-Elion

Brendan Smith-Elion is VP, Product Management at Arcadia. He has over 20+ years in the healthcare vendor space. His passion is product management, but he also has experience in business development and BI engineer roles. At Arcadia, Brendan is dedicated to driving transformational outcomes for clients through data-powered, value-focused workflows. He started his career at Agfa where he led the cardiology PACS platform before moving onto a startup, Chartwise, focused on clinical document improvement. Brendan also spent time at athenahealth where he led efforts to develop provider workflows for meaningful use, quality measures, specialty workflows, and clinical microservices for ordering and a universal chart service. His most recent role prior to article was at Alphabet/Google working on a healthcare data platform for the Verily Health Platform teams working on data products for payer and provider preventative disease management.