Moving beyond the pandemic: Healthcare IT lessons learned

[Al_Madden]

Co-athored by Al Madden and Rich Bird

It’s been a little over two years since COVID-19 took control of the world, instantly changing how we conduct our daily lives. The industry most effected was healthcare. As professional caregivers raced to save lives, the healthcare IT professionals also responded. They quickly realized they were ill-prepared for such a disruptive event and responded by updating technology to meet the enormous task ahead.

A recent article, Top 6 healthcare IT lessons from the pandemic, describes the IT lessons learned during the first challenging year of the pandemic and how these experiences are helping the healthcare industry thrive today. It’s a fascinating read – one we enjoyed so much we're sharing its 6 key takeaways below.

• Rethinking remote healthcare

Prior to the spring of 2019, remote care typically involved a patient far away from a healthcare facility and a healthcare team located together at a traditional clinical setting.  And were hard to be reimbursed for.  As clinical settings were overrun with sick patients, many people were not willing to visit physicians in person. Telehealth now included many more patients working with healthcare teams (physicians and administrators) who were remote from each other. And while emergency rooms were overrun, many other revenue-producing elective surgery centers were shut down, creating a financial burden.

All these changes meant the normal telehealth procedures in place previously were insufficient; therefore, changes were made to make the process more efficient. Because telehealth is here to stay, these changes are now making it easier for healthcare teams to work together to deliver and monetize remote healthcare services.

• Better electronic health records

Documentation procedures captured in electronic health records (EHRs) dramatically changed to meet the extraordinary demands of the pandemic. Many EHR vendors quickly augmented their software to reflect new guidelines, such as patient questionnaires, lab information, and decision support capabilities. Today, these changes are making EHRs more efficient, allowing providers to gather, analyse, and act on information more rapidly.

• The growth of E-scripts

For telehealth physicians, prescribing medicines electronically was all part of a day’s work. Yet for many physicians, paper scripts handed to patients after their visit were the norm. The pandemic changed all that, as many healthcare providers embraced E-scripts because it provided more pharmacy options and faster deliveries to patients.

• An increase in self-serve diagnostics

Although diagnostic tests are a vital part of making a correct diagnosis, their use dramatically dropped during the pandemic. For safety reasons, many diagnostic facilities closed for a time during the early months of the outbreak. Also, numerous patients were hesitant to have diagnostics done, wanting to remain safe in their homes for fear of COVID-19 exposure.

To combat both issues, IoT and apps on mobile devices were used by patients to fill the diagnostics gaps. Patients self-reported blood pressures, temperatures, oxygen levels and other stats using at home devices. And as COVID-19 at home test kits became available, many people were able to self-test without leaving the comfort of their homes. Although many diagnostics cannot be done from home, the pandemic pushed numerous home tests and self-reporting into the mainstream.

• Enabling critical patient communications

Because of the strict isolation protocols, family and friends were unable to visit the sick. Especially in end-of-life situations, this reality was devastating. Many hospitals quickly boosted their Wi-Fi capabilities and used any available tablets and even staff phones to connect dying patients with loved ones. Prior to the pandemic, communication devices were not a priority; this painful experience has taught many in the industry to prioritize innovations in patient and family communications.

• Healthcare: more agile than we thought

In the past, healthcare has been slow to innovate, due to regulations and other complexities in the industry. Yet when faced with a huge challenge of life and death decisions, our healthcare systems came through. Facilities all over the world were able to pivot and scale services when they were desperately needed.

The healthcare industry has learned much in the past two difficult years. And with recent investments in technologies, the hope is we continue to innovate, building on the lessons learned during the pandemic.

Check out the complete article, Top 6 healthcare IT lessons from the pandemic.

Learn more about healthcare and life sciences IT solutions at HPE. Visit the Aruba (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company) web page to read more about healthcare networking solutions.

About the authors:

Rich Bird has worked in the IT industry for 20 years with some of the largest commercial brands. For the last 5 years he’s been focused on healthcare IT at HPE and believes deeply that digital technologies can, will, and need to have an impact on the delivery of better healthcare for people worldwide. Rich is a strategic thinker who understands the practical elements required to get the job done and deliver real impact. His areas of specialization include healthcare IT, marketing, communications, and NLP.

Al Madden is with IoT marketing at HPE and is an expert in edge computing. (See full bio top right on this page.)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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