Empowered Patient Podcast Moving to the Cloud Essential for Integrated Digital Health Ecosystems with Dr. Shafiq Rab Tufts Medicine
Dr. Shafiq Rab is the Chief Digital Officer and System Chief Information Officer at Tufts Medicine and an advocate for cloud-based health ecosystems. Healthcare is one of the last industries that has not moved into the cloud to integrate the entire ecosystem of patient data, clinical trial updates, provider information, and payer processes and allow for research and advanced analytics. The cloud provides the flexibility to scale operations and reduce costs related to physical space and administration. While it is hard to get the variety of electronic health record databases and applications to work together, it is even harder to get the humans involved to adjust to new technologies in the workplace.
Shafiq explains, "So in the world that we live in, where everybody wants an Amazon-like experience, healthcare has to go a little forward. On paper, things are still a little less efficient. To make that happen, there are three stages that everybody has to go through. One is digitizing everything, then digitalization, and finally, digital transformation, which is a cultural thing."
"Why into the cloud? That ecosystem means all the applications that you want to use to deliver healthcare. You have it in a place in the cloud because the cloud has the computing power. It allows you to compute things faster and quicker. In the world of healthcare, the consumer consumes on a phone, on an iPhone or Android, at the edge, which is known as edge computing. The connectivity depends upon the strength of the internet and the interoperability between the different systems. So, if you do not have an ecosystem up in the cloud with your major electronic health record, it becomes hard to deliver that information."
"We also benefited by decreasing the number of portals for our patients, for our consumers. We now have one app. Before, we had about 84 different portals and different ways of getting the information, and it was not in one place. So the North Star is how to make it easier and more welcoming, the access to care for the consumers and the communities we serve. Simultaneously, making it also easier for care providers to provide the care, and the employees who work here, and the vendors who are part of the ecosystem, because that's how we complete the ring of healthcare."
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