As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge across the United States, hospitals and facilities are rapidly filling and healthcare professionals are struggling to keep up with the pace. And although broad improvements have been made since the pandemic’s outset, many frontline health workers still find their time absorbed with addressing technical problems with their electronic health record (EHR) systems.
Often, healthcare systems and facilities lack the IT infrastructure or staffing needed to troubleshoot and correct these problems, creating inefficiencies and exacerbating existing strain. Implementing the right EHR system, seamlessly integrating data and software, and adequately training staff is more important than ever. Digital transformation is here to stay in the healthcare industry, with a large-scale public health crisis serving as its accelerant.
Since the outset of the pandemic, the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition has assembled an all-star team of EHR vendors, Big Data providers, health systems, and other technology organizations to provide greater information-sharing, learning, and communication to the frontlines of the coronavirus. Featuring EHR software enterprises like Epic and athenahealth, tech titans AWS and Microsoft, healthcare systems like Mayo Clinic and HCA, and even MITRE, the Coalition is dedicated to deploying and integrating open source solutions across the nation. The massive collaboration is not-for-profit and is propelling industry-specific innovation that should advance the overall health-data infrastructure.
The long-neglected need for enhanced transformation and connectivity is finally being addressed thanks to a united effort to deliver the best patient results possible, during public health crises and beyond. Also, the field of remote and virtual healthcare, which has also seen exponential growth this year, will continue to improve non-emergency service access and alleviate some of the pressure on frontline workers.
However, healthcare facilities and systems must optimize their EHR systems for usability and dependability in order to maximize frontline health workers’ time. Artificial intelligence company c3.ai introduced the COVID-19 Data Lake, a cloud-based repository for sharing and analyzing patient data, another initiative leading the digital transformation of healthcare. New technologies and ever-advancing software solutions should help relieve the medical workforce as new challenges arise.
