All around the planet healthcare providers are working to fundamentally redesign the way clinics adopt the patient care models. These advanced models are built in such a fashion that it can cater to the ever increasing pressure of diseases due to growing age, chronic disorders and definitely increasing expectations of patients. These inevitable changes are happening because of the urgency created by costs, cut-throat competition and due to the strict government regulations related to the quality of care provision. To survive in this strict and rapid paced world, every organization faces similar challenge to have an accurate-data-first approach and an end-to-end robust and automated information management.
So are you dreaming of improving patient outcome by transforming the way how information is managed, shared and processed across the continuum of care? Comes here Alfresco healthcare which is moving towards achieving the goal of establishing a paperless clinical world. It is looking forward to going paperless, mobile and empowering collaborative working thereby breaking the shackles of carrying papers and prescriptions across the world for treatment.
Challenges faced:
The EHR (Electronic Health Record) is the new digital real time version of a patient’s paper chart which makes information handy. But the technical clinical records and EHRs are poorly equipped and mismanaged due to the immense volume and myriad variety of data produced from endless sources.
The major reason for breakdown lies in the lack of substantial technical and process interoperability of the complex applications used at the medical centers and definitely the volume of digital transformation needed for the correct interoperability. The immense volume and variety of digital information generated has complicated the healthcare systems and it needs an equally large scale of digital transformation. The convoluted digital ecosystem needs a sophisticated information management system which caters particularly to the unstructured content amplifying the weaknesses of EHRs. The explosion of patient data and inefficient information management’s impact is quite certainly visible in the deteriorated quality of care provided and the ever-rising cost of care provision.
Solution to the problem:
The healthcare models need a complete coverage of the entire process from precautionary measures to treatment to disease and accurate information management. It should also be able to provide a holistic view of the patient’s records at any time and from anywhere. Hence digital transformation is the key priority of health organizations in this digital era as they need to leverage the opportunities delivered by the technologies like cloud, big data and mobile, etc. So the cornerstone is the adoption of a flexible platform built in cloud. But the platform should be capable enough leveraging mobile, social and analytics to gather, analyze, deliver, and help decision-making based on patient information in different settings and for myriad purposes.
How Alfresco Document Management can prove to be a help?
Alfresco Document Management gives the provision of open-source, flexible and easily integrating platform which allows the medical clinics to integrate this modern ECM system to their legacy system. It helps in easy migration as well as lucid maintenance of all the documents of various departments. It helps in easy overthrowing of patient’s care challenges and unlock the future potentials. It aims towards achieving a holistic view of patient’s medical records. Alfresco document management extends Electronics Medical Reports (EMRs) and patient’s system to secure it under one single tight jacket.
1. Complete Electronic Medical Record:
Alfresco healthcare enables instant and comprehensive access to all patient-related content from anywhere and at any time. Alfresco document management delivers a holistic view of patient history by adding all the patients’ electronic documents to your EMR thereby care delivery and outcomes.
It complies with mandates for going paper-less and the Meaningful Use Act (USA) while bringing together records held in disparate clinical systems. It delivers joined-up care – enabling the administrators and clinic workers to co‑ordinate work but ensuring each accesses the information they need only. It also keeps an accurate track and categorize all medical record types that includes test results, medical images, notes, prescriptions etc. through one platform which is tightly integrated with the rest of the systems needed.
2. Vendor Neutral Archive:
Alfresco’s vendor-neutral archive (VNA) consolidates divergent medical images into a single repository. It also guarantees that the VNA system can be seamlessly accessed as a part of your overall EMR.
It enables lucid search, look through and retrieval of patient imaging, indifferent of its original format. It connects DICOM and Non-DICOM clinical content to simplify information sharing process between numerous Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS). It is XDS enabled as well, allowing effortless patient information exchange between systems.
3. Clinical Process Automation:
Alfresco document management helps to automate and modernize your clinical processes right from admission of patient through to discharge to maintaining reports and a lot more.
Alfresco healthcare assists healthcare administrators to create e-forms and optimize workflow processes with minimal IT involvement. It automatically routes the appropriate information to accurate places and optimize the care pathway across multiple clinical systems. It also discards inefficient paper-based processes and reduces patient frustration of repeated form-filling containing similar information at different sections for different purposes.
4. Effective Clinical Collaboration:
Alfresco document management gives you the provision to share information and coordinate treatment across multiple care providers, along with utmost security to safeguard patient information.
It delivers an improved, more joined-up patient experience around various care providers, spanning across hospital to general practice to a lot more.
It takes exceptional care of confidential information and makes them available securely wherever it is needed on any device.
It ensures an immense secure collaboration breadth where all stakeholders, including the patients, who can access up-to-date information at any given hour of the day.
On a parting note Alfresco’s ECM and BPM solutions seem to underpin information management, collaboration and care process automation in evolve, allowing the partners and customers to build and change the care pathways on the existing evolve platform and meet the rapid paced, ever-growing and dire needs of healthcare delivery.
References: Alfresco blogs, Alfresco news
Pratyush Kumar
