Leveraging Innovative Technologies To Empower Population Health Management

Big Data’s Crucial Role in Today’s Healthcare

Population health management (PHM) intends to improve the health of all served communities with a focus on health patterns, patient outcomes, policy creation, and proactive patient intervention. Software innovations have enabled the healthcare industry to collect and analyze unprecedented patient data, often called ‘big data,’ to make more accurate and informed proactive decisions.

PHM is not a new concept, but its scope has gradually changed to include reductions in emergency room visits, proactively identifying high-risk patients for chronic diseases, and a shift toward outcome-based results emphasizing successful treatment and patient satisfaction.

Chronic disease treatment remains one of the most significant expenses the healthcare industry struggles with. Increases in hospitalizations have severely taxed the industry but what if there was a way to leverage data in innovative ways to mitigate expenses associated with treating chronic diseases?

AI data analytics may offer healthcare an invaluable resource for proactively identifying and monitoring patient diseases, enabling them to determine which patient is a higher risk for the future onset of chronic disease.

Researchers utilizing AI algorithms identified patterns in patient data to successfully predict the disease’s path within a patient, enabling healthcare providers to inform patients and proactively begin treatment. Software innovations allow the healthcare industry to access and analyze data with predictive algorithms as an invaluable resource for the industry to work to reduce expenses, provide positive, outcome-based treatments, and gain a unique insight into how to identify the chronic disease and mitigate its impacts before a patient’s quality of life deteriorates.

Health Information Exchange Streamlines Patient Data Access

Healthcare providers study big data analytics to identify community health trends, and by utilizing Health Information Exchange (HIE) software features, data collection, aggregation, and dissemination of pertinent information is streamlined. The data and records exchange between multiple clinical data systems enables confidential access and efficient sharing of patient medical history and treatment plans with other providers, regardless of which office a patient receives care from. HIE’s additional benefits include:

Effective HIE software is designed to streamline healthcare workflow by reducing the required steps to access patient information from multiple providers via a centralized data source.

Enhanced HIE software enables expedient hospital readmissions because patient intake data is already stored within a centralized data source, eliminating time-consuming manual data entry.

Interoperability: Paramount for PHM Success

Interoperability is paramount for a successful HIE to streamline PHM. Interoperability is simply efficient access and exchange of medical information between multiple health management entities. There are four levels of interoperability within healthcare:

HIE software solutions adhere to IHE, HL7, CDA, CCD, RDA, DICOM, and NwHIN healthcare technology regulatory standards. Health Level 7 (HL7) continues to be the standard for medical data communication because:

Re-Imagining Population Health Management with Telehealth

The global pandemic gave way to the increased use of telehealth, as many patients were left without in-person access to critical medical services. Telehealth, or telemedicine, allows healthcare providers to offer medical care and evaluations via telecommunications rather than in-person visits. The significant increase in telehealth patients provided the following advantages during and after the pandemic:

Population health management looks to promote and increase patient engagement. Telehealth live video streaming utilizing HIPAA-compliant video conferencing software facilitated virtual office platforms, and seamless integrations of interoperable electronic health records (EHR) enabled more streamlined health provider experiences.

Population health management initiatives seek to amplify patient experiences by facilitating increased patient engagement. Healthcare industry advocates state telehealth breaks down barriers such as having patients interact within their chosen environment and having healthcare access and appointment options that exceed the limitations of traditional, in-office appointments. Connected technology plays an undeniably critical role in telehealth. With population health management initiatives focusing on outcome-based, patient-focused results, software developers also play a crucial role in population health management because successful telehealth programs rely on seamless HL7 integration, optimized EHR software, and HIPAA-compliant data sharing.

Drive the Evolution of PHM with Skilled Developers

Aided by the efforts of expert developers, software companies can offer the healthcare industry invaluable resources that would further broaden the scope of population health management and provide data-driven evidence to further assist healthcare providers in working closer toward fully streamlining patient data access to ultimately facilitate positive patient outcomes.

Effective population health management requires an optimized HIE and leveraging data-driven analysis to enable the healthcare industry to bring population health management’s ambitious goals to fruition.