According to a recent survey, the global healthcare and medical system integrators market is projected to reach $2.8 million, growing at a CAGR of 11.88% from 2022 to 2027. (Source) In the digital transformation era, system integration is essential to ensure the seamless care delivery of patients.
System integrators connect different disparate systems and software including hospital systems, drug manufacturers, wholesale distributors, pharmacy outlets, medical insurance companies, clinics, suppliers, and vendors among others. With the help of system integration testing, you can know how well two systems communicate with each other and work together.
What is the IT integration challenge in healthcare?
Every time a person visits a hospital there is a form that they need to fill out. Each form is a tool to get information from the patient and a tool that supplies new information or verifies existing information with various healthcare facilities. Electronic health records were created to ensure that there is one universal record of a patient that different healthcare facilities can refer to.
However, the challenge that many healthcare facilities faced were the adoption of different popular EHR systems and the creation of self-made EHR systems. Such systems stored data in a typical way and sent data out in a different way compared to each other. Furthermore, data from the EHR systems are sent to insurance and billing companies to see who owes how much money wherein each company requests a specific data type.
In summary, there are several records representing a person that is sent and shared in different forms and formats. Without proper system integration testing and pairing the connection between EHR systems, billing, and insurance companies falls over and does not benefit either companies or patients.
How can system integrators solve this problem?
System integrators can help you check how smoothly your system can communicate with other systems and software. Also, they can help you can check how long it takes for you to generate data, process it, and how the receiving system receives it.
System integration testing is used to check how well the internal systems communicate with each other and how they communicate with external systems. Also, system integrators may need to build new integrations specific to certain vendors, suppliers, or customers that the business interacts with.
Each software application or system has an API that should be easy to integrate with other applications and systems. Apart from flexible APIs, the application or system should be easy to adopt electronic data interchange standards, the latest healthcare standards, HIPPA compliance, JSON, and XML standards among others.
What strategy can system integrators use for EHR migration and integration in healthcare?
Electronic data migrations and HL7 interfaces are currently responsible for the smooth data exchange between EHR systems and other systems for healthcare businesses. API of each system and application gets tested at a granular level to closely monitor how data is created, updated, and deleted. After understanding the flow of information, the user interface is developed to determine the usability of the software product and testing happens for form submissions.
Post that the data is shared between different systems and during this if you hit a roadblock then you must check the log files to check how far the data has travelled. This will tell you why specific data is not reflected in a particular system. Moreover, if the system integrators working for healthcare units do not identify data gaps as they arise there can be problems between data exchanges and integration.
Thus, it is important to develop a patient-centric approach while creating software modules, forms, and other technology that encourages patients to share information. At the same time, this information can be used to determine population healthcare trends thus benefiting both patients and caregivers.
When multiple providers and medical professionals use collaborative care management by integrating their systems it is important that they follow a standardized system. By doing this, they can ensure that the patient gets the best diagnosis and course of treatment every time.
Finally, system integrators must ensure that systems are up to date with the latest standards and technology to efficiently collect, track and report activities.
What is integrated healthcare management?
Integrated healthcare management is an approach wherein there is communication between different caregivers like doctors, nurses, lab assistants, and other health professionals working on a patient. The interprofessional health team communicates with each other regarding the health of a patient. This team makes sure to assess the individual needs, check service eligibility, determine care plans, and monitor and reassess the patient’s needs.
What are the five building blocks of integrated healthcare management?
The five building blocks of integrated healthcare management are analytics, collaboration, interoperability, portability, and security.
1. Analytics
By using cutting-edge analytics and predictive modeling healthcare facilities can stratify patients and align them according to the level of care needed and the urgency of care required.
2. Collaboration
Integrated healthcare management facilitates smooth collaboration between different healthcare professionals like doctors, nurses, and patients among others anytime anywhere.
3. Interoperability
Integrated healthcare systems can smoothly exchange and make use of information and present it clearly to all the stakeholders.
4. Easy access
Integrated health care systems are easy to access over different devices making health care records available when necessary.
5. Security
In integrated healthcare management, there are different inputs and multiple access points which is why it is important to provide secure access.
Integrated healthcare management simplifies the process of getting information from diverse sources like personal health records, claims eligibility, health risk assessments, and lab results among others. By using, integrated healthcare systems you can avoid treatment overlaps, unnecessary tests, and hospitalizations and get the best care.
Healthcare companies are turning to SaaS models for building and maintaining integrated healthcare systems in a cost-effective manner. System integrators can improve existing IT systems and develop and deploy new systems to organize and share healthcare data in an efficient manner.
If you are looking for a trustworthy partner to align all your software systems in an organized manner, SkillGigs can help you hire the best system integrators. Skill Gigs is a direct sourcing talent marketplace that organizes candidates’ information in an efficient manner including pay expectations, preferred location, and personal details. Also, the marketplace manages the credentialing of their key documentation, skillsets, and certification.
If the concept of direct sourcing for your facility is new, and you would like to learn more — no worries, it’s why we built SkillGigs.com. Contact us to learn more!
