The healthcare industry is drowning in data. To be exact, 30% of the entire world’s stored data is dedicated to the healthcare industry and is growing by about 137 terabytes per day. Compounding this is continuous digital transformation, which introduces valuable new technologies and innovations that cause these numbers to swell at a rate of 47% per year.
How does this affect those behind the data? Well, the impact is twofold - providers tasked with reviewing, managing, and maintaining this data are facing an untenable challenge, and the stress of such a Herculean task is greatly impacting both provider and patient quite negatively. According to the NIH, nearly 13% of patient safety incidents are directly linked to provider stress - and get this — over 30% of those incidents result in severe harm.
Because of the sheer, and escalating volume of data already convoluted workflows are becoming evermore impossible to navigate. Add to this the arduous monotony of repetitive administrative tasks - frequently cited as major contributors to burnout - and it’s no wonder providers are feeling increasingly frustrated and defeated.
There is, however, a light at the end of this data-infested tunnel - micro-workflows. Instead of wrestling with unwieldy, monolithic workflows, micro-workflows break complex tasks down into bite-sized, manageable chunks.
Picture a routine encounter where a provider, using their mobile device, captures an image and includes it in a patient's Electronic Health Record (EHR) as a macro-workflow. In contrast, micro-workflows deconstruct this process into discrete steps, for example, identifying the patient within the EHR, capturing the image, inputting relevant metadata from the encounter, and seamlessly sharing the image with the patient's care team, when necessary.
These seemingly small efforts may not sound burdensome for a single patient interaction, but when multiplied by dozens of similar interactions each day, these repetitive tasks decrease the amount of time that providers have for meaningful patient interaction, lower overall productivity, increase the likelihood of human error, and contribute significantly to burnout and fatigue.
By automating micro–workflows, healthcare organizations can more effectively collect and utilize information collected from various workflows, systems, and connected devices while simultaneously relieving healthcare providers of the workflow burden associated with navigating complex user interfaces and cumbersome tasks. As well, by bridging disparate data sources and providing a unified view of patient information, micro-workflows allow healthcare providers to spot trends, anomalies, and insights that might otherwise slip through the cracks.
Realizing the full potential of micro-workflows requires more than just a change in mindset. It requires a sophisticated imaging ecosystem orchestrator capable of orchestrating and automating tasks across clinical, IT, and AI applications. However, I’m sure we are in agreement that it is well worth it, if it means that providers are positioned to facilitate meaningful optimization throughout the enterprise and enable real-time access, interoperability, and comprehensive monitoring of the entire healthcare IT application portfolio - regardless of vendor - through a single pane of glass.
So take a breath, and relax, because the future of healthcare is about to get a whole lot more manageable—and a whole lot less stressful.
コメント