11.03.14
Technology to drive healthcare change
More than 70% of healthcare leaders believe their organisation needs to change faster over the next three years – driven by new technology platforms.
The finding comes from a new Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) study, ‘The Challenge of Speed’, which revealed that the most significant barrier preventing the speed at which change is implemented is due to time constraints on healthcare professionals.
Other major bottlenecks to increasing improvements include the challenge of effectively linking technology platforms; and the presence of multiple and potentially conflicting initiatives.
The research was sponsored by Ricoh UK, whose national sales director – government, Alasdair McCormick, said: “The need for immediate and secure access to medical information that’s easily shareable between patients and healthcare providers – coupled with access to critical information at any time, from any location – are crucial factors increasing pressure on UK healthcare leaders to become more digitally-centric. Improving healthcare’s core business processes is without doubt the foundation for transformation.”
Echoing the newly released EIU research, the healthcare sector has been focused on speeding up the progress of digital transformation. For example, in 2013, health secretary Jeremy Hunt challenged the NHS to become paperless by 2018.
Last week at the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2014, Sir David Nicholson, the outgoing chief executive of NHS England, also said that the NHS must change if it is to survive and remain sustainable.
“Changes are about organising services around individuals and we need to make sure we have primary care services that can support seven-day working. We need to integrate services, we need to be efficient in elective services and urgent and emergency care services need to be fixed,” he said. “All this is a significant challenge and involves a change in the way we deliver services. It is difficult and it is tough. We need to nationally make the case for the change.”
The new EIU study examined the challenges of enhancing business flexibility and what steps organisations should take to be faster. Within healthcare, leaders from hospitals, medical device manufacturers and pharmaceuticals, were surveyed.
McCormick added that Ricoh worked with NHS Fife in an attempt to improve its healthcare information sharing between clinicians while tackling increasing costs, waste and a growing lack of control over print resources.
“We helped them overcome their digital transformation challenges, to better serve their community of 360,000. We delivered substantial cost savings, a reduction in print waste of 1.2m pages and course corrected its reliance on print device numbers by 90%,” he stated.
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