Connecting the dots

It is critical for regional healthcare providers to augment, improve and enhance their digital health readiness and footprint

- Ahmed Faiyaz

Health systems across the globe have been significantly tested, strained, and impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. Governments have scrambled to introduce guidelines and streamline health system capacity, while trying to improve connectivity and access to critical care to meet the needs of their patient communities.

Prior to the pandemic, regulators, payors, and providers, along with innovative pharma companies and medtech players, were investing in integrating patient data and improving connectivity and interoperability of electronic health records. The purpose was to better connect the dots, improve diagnosis and treatment pathways, facilitate the efficacy of and adherence to drugs, as well as cost containment and ensuring the sustainability of health system financing.

The need to do this has grown in importance as health professionals can treat medical conditions only when they know more about their patient’s history. A holistic and patient-centric understanding of an individual’s health and risk profile will deliver better outcomes and help contain costs in the long term, allowing the medical community to deliver population-focused health programmes and evolve to a system that offers ‘healthcare’ rather than ‘sick care’.

We are also now seeing a strong effort to drive investment in digital health services and integrating telehealth services within payor platforms and models of care, further spurred by Covid-19.