From EHRs to UDHPs (Unified Digital Health Platforms)- Section 1 – The Health Care Blog

By VINCE KURAITIS, GIRISH MURALIDHARAN & JODY RANCK

This entry is a component 3 of three within the collection Platforming Healthcare — The Long View. This essay is the following within the collection entitled “Platforming Healthcare — the Lengthy View”. The collection presents a 30-12 months Framework for Platforming Healthcare. An up to date v2.0 of a graphic depicting this 30-12 months Framework is proven beneath.

This entry is a component 3 of three within the collection Platforming Healthcare — The Long View. This essay is the following within the collection entitled “Platforming Healthcare — the Lengthy View”. The collection presents a 30-12 months Framework for Platforming Healthcare. An up to date v2.0 of a graphic depicting this 30-12 months Framework is proven above.

At the moment’s publish will describe and talk about a possible successor to the EHR period — Unified Digital Well being Platforms (UDHPs). Right here’s an outline:

• Background and Environmental Developments
• Gartner’s Key Position in Characterizing the UDHP Motion
• UDHP Worth Propositions
• Examples of UDHPs

Later this week THCB will run the second part which is able to embody evaluation of the Mayo Clinic Platform.

Healthcare is fragmented. Information just isn’t standardized and has existed in silos. Sufferers and clinicians have disjointed experiences. Fee buildings create conflicting incentives.

Digital Well being Information (EHRs) have been as soon as touted as the important thing answer for reworking healthcare to a contemporary, digitally-enabled trade. But, they proceed to frustrate clinicians with poor UI/UX and largely fulfill a main position as a system of document to doc claims submissions. 

Latest technological and enterprise developments have begun reworking healthcare right into a extra unified and built-in expertise: 

• HITECH (within the U.S.) drove the adoption of digital well being data throughout the trade 
• Requirements-compliant knowledge fashions and APIs throughout varied options are permitting third-party integrations so as to add new performance 
• Worth-based care (VBC) and value-based cost (VBP) fashions incentivize enhancing high quality quite than maximizing fee-for-service volumes 
• AI’s emergence and adoption in healthcare fuels the necessity for extra – and higher – knowledge and knowledge liquidity. 
• New opponents in healthcare (Massive Tech, Massive Retail, digital well being ventures) compete primarily based on enhancing affected person expertise, advancing VBC and VBP fashions, and built-in knowledge and analytics 
• Accessible cloud computing infrastructure is enabling a plethora of **-as-a-Service enterprise fashions 

Healthcare organizations need built-in options, no more level options. See the previous blog post on this collection — “Past Consciousness: Understanding the Magnitude of Level Answer Fatigue in Healthcare”.

The developments and forces listed above open the door and create the necessity for a brand new class of enterprise software program – Unified Digital Well being Platforms (UDHPs). 

A December 2022 Gartner Market Information report characterised the long-term potential:

The DHP shift will emerge as essentially the most cost-effective and technically environment friendly technique to scale new digital capabilities inside and throughout well being ecosystems and can, over time, change the dominant period of the monolithic digital well being document (EHR).

Whereas Gartner makes use of the time period “Digital Well being Platform (DHP), we use the time period “Unified Digital Well being Platform” as a result of 1) it’s extra descriptive of the structure and its capabilities, and a couple of) it distinguishes UDHPs from the hundreds of different digital well being platforms that fluctuate extremely in operate.

The DHP Reference Structure is illustrated in a blog post by Better. Notice that UDHPs are depicted as “sitting on prime” of EHRs and different siloed sources of well being knowledge:

Gartner continues to replace its market stories on UDHPs. An April 2024 replace is entitled: “Innovation Perception: Digital Well being Platforms Speed up Transformation”. As of the date of publishing this weblog publish, Altera is providing a complimentary copy of Gartner’s 2024 report on UDHPs.  

This weblog publish is meant to focus extra on the enterprise and technique implications of UDHPs. We strongly suggest studying Gartner’s April 2024 report on UDHPs to achieve a extra technical perspective.

Gartner additionally gives an up to date (however not exhaustive) list of UDHPs:

• AWS HealthLake by Amazon Net Providers
• Higher Platform by Higher
• DrCloud EHR by EnSoftek
• Engagement Rx by Avidon Well being
• Edison Intelligence Platform by GE Healthcare
• Google Cloud Healthcare Information Engine by Google
• IBM Well being Insights and IBM Watson Annotator for Scientific Information by IBM
• Healthshare and Intersystems IRIS for Well being by Intersystems
• Kyruus Join by Kyruus Well being
• Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare by Microsoft
• Miya Precision by Alcidion
• Philips Healthsuite Digital Platform by Philips
• SAS Well being by SAS
• ServiceNow Healthcare and Life Sciences Providers Administration by ServiceNow

We’ll add our personal candidates to the listing:

• Epic EMR by Epic
• Well being Intelligence Platform by vitagroup
• Innovacer Well being Cloud by Innovacer
• Nucleus for Healthcare by NTTDATA
• Oracle Well being EHR by Oracle
• Salesforce Well being Cloud by Salesforce
• SAP Well being Information Providers for FHIR by SAP
• othersTBD?

The UDHP development is in very early phases. In its April 2024 report, Gartner estimates that the market is just 5% penetrated and that UDHP adoption will take 5 to 10 years. 

As of at present, the capabilities of UDHP choices are usually not uniform. In an early market, it isn’t uncommon that early choices from firms will differ. We’ll talk about some attainable ramifications within the part beneath on “Enterprise and Strategic Implications of UDHPs”.

It’s attainable that UDHP adoption will transfer extra shortly in nations exterior the U.S. Within the U.S., Epic and Cerner have a lock on well being techniques and try to develop into UDHPs themselves.

Within the appendix on the finish of the publish, we’ve supplied a listing of sources to elucidate UDHPs additional.

UDHPs promise a spread of potential worth propositions:

• Bettering medical care and unifying at the moment fragmented affected person and clinician experiences 
• Overcoming the restrictions of at present’s EHRs, e.g.,
  • Standardizing knowledge fashions throughout EHRs and digital well being apps 
  • Facilitating bi-directional knowledge move 
  • Supplying low code/no code instruments to handle workflow and processes throughout care groups, together with sufferers 
  • Creating marketplaces for progressive third get together apps
  • Capturing new, progressive sources of knowledge, e.g., regarding social determinants of well being, patient-generated knowledge, psychographic knowledge, and so on. 
• Providing modular, composable architectures 
• Enabling a standard infrastructure to unify at present’s disparate point-solution choices 
• Offering aggressive benefit. We’ll talk about this extra extensively beneath. 

We’ll present a few case research as an instance how UDHPs are being developed and deployed:

• A vendor case examine of the ServiceNow UDHP
• A healthcare supplier case examine on UDHP deployment – the Mayo Clinic Platform

We invite different UDHP distributors to contribute a substantive visitor publish describing their providing and the way prospects deploy it. (Write to Vince vincek@bhtinfo for particulars.)

Case Research: ServiceNow’s Unified Digital Well being Platform in Healthcare Operations

One instance of a UDHP in observe is ServiceNow’s digital well being platform. This case examine examines its structure, customization capabilities, and real-world functions inside healthcare supplier settings.

ServiceNow’s UDHP Structure and Key Elements

As proven within the diagram below, ServiceNow’s digital well being platform is structured to combine a number of healthcare workflows whereas guaranteeing compliance and safety. The platform is constructed on a multi-layered structure that features:

• Information Layer: A centralized repository for structured and unstructured healthcare knowledge, guaranteeing accessibility and accuracy throughout techniques.
• Safety Layer: Supplies compliance frameworks and safety controls to guard delicate affected person info and cling to regulatory requirements.
• Software Layer: Hosts varied healthcare functions reminiscent of digital well being data (EHR), affected person engagement instruments, and supplier workflow administration.
• Infrastructure Layer: Cloud-based and on-premises options to help scalability, availability, and interoperability throughout a number of healthcare techniques.

The layered strategy allows healthcare organizations to combine present IT techniques whereas adopting new digital well being options.

Customized Workflow Capabilities: Enhancing Operational Effectivity

One of many key benefits of ServiceNow’s UDHP is its functionality to help customized workflows tailor-made to the wants of healthcare suppliers. Customized workflows enable organizations to automate and optimize processes past commonplace out-of-the-box options.

Instance: Customized Workflow for Clinician Onboarding

A typical problem in healthcare is the complexity of onboarding new clinicians, particularly in giant hospital networks. Conventional onboarding processes contain a number of departments, together with HR, IT, and credentialing groups, usually resulting in inefficiencies.

Utilizing ServiceNow’s workflow automation instruments, a healthcare group can create a personalized onboarding course of that:

• Automates Credential Verification: Integrates with third-party verification providers to make sure compliance earlier than a clinician begins practising.
• Coordinates IT Provisioning: Routinely assigns required techniques entry, together with EHR permissions and safe messaging platforms.
• Tracks Onboarding Progress: Supplies real-time visibility to HR and division managers, decreasing administrative delays.

By implementing a structured digital workflow, healthcare organizations can speed up onboarding instances, scale back administrative workload, and improve compliance monitoring.

Printed Examples of ServiceNow’s UDHP in Healthcare Suppliers

A number of healthcare organizations have deployed ServiceNow’s platform to deal with operational inefficiencies and enhance service supply. The next examples spotlight how UDHP capabilities have been utilized in several healthcare settings.

1. Novant Well being: Decreasing Administrative Bottlenecks

Novant Health carried out ServiceNow to streamline IT service administration and automate healthcare workflows. By leveraging UDHP capabilities, the group improved system uptime and diminished delays in affected person care attributable to IT-related points. Automated workflows ensured that clinicians had rapid entry to crucial techniques, decreasing time spent on administrative requests.

2. Sentara Healthcare: Digital Workflow Optimization

Sentara Healthcare used ServiceNow’s digital workflows to combine varied operational processes throughout its community of hospitals and outpatient facilities. The platform enabled real-time monitoring of kit upkeep requests, employees allocation, and affected person coordination, resulting in elevated effectivity in care supply.

3. Elara Caring: Standardizing Processes Throughout A number of Areas

Elara Caring, a house healthcare supplier, confronted challenges in managing affected person referrals, caregiver scheduling, and compliance documentation. By adopting ServiceNow’s UDHP, Elara Caring unified these processes right into a single workflow, decreasing errors and enhancing general affected person service coordination.

Conclusion

ServiceNow’s UDHP illustrates the potential of digital platforms in optimizing healthcare workflows, enhancing operational effectivity, and guaranteeing compliance. By leveraging structured knowledge, automation, and customized workflows, healthcare organizations can adapt the platform to their distinctive operational wants.

As extra healthcare suppliers shift in direction of digital transformation, UDHPs will play a important position in bridging gaps between conventional healthcare IT techniques and rising digital well being improvements.

Vince Kuraitis JD/MBA is an impartial guide with over 35 years’ expertise throughout 150+ healthcare & tech firms. He publishes The Healthcare Platform Blog, the place this publish first appeared. Girish Muralidharan was an SVP at GE Healthcare till April 2024 and held quite a lot of Government enterprise administration roles throughout Imaging tools, tech enabled providers, digital platforms & options during the last 2 many years.Dr. Jody Ranck is a researcher with over 30 years of expertise in world and home US well being know-how and coated AI, knowledge analytics, and SDoH with Chilmark Analysis.