Healthcare providers are leveraging Microsoft Cloud, a comprehensive set of more than 200 solutions. Even though the healthcare industry can be resistant to change, more organizations are now open to digital transformation, especially for managing data at scale. And Microsoft Cloud helps them with the bottom line — maximizing efficiency and improving patient experiences. Let’s take a closer look at what Microsoft Cloud for healthcare can offer.
Overview of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare was first launched in October 2020. Since then, it has had several waves of new releases, with more functionalities being added on an ongoing basis.
The goal of the suite is to enable providers to use technology tools to “reshape and reimagine healthcare.”
Microsoft Cloud can improve many aspects of healthcare organizations, including booking, productivity, intelligence, data management, security, compliance, and more. Microsoft Teams, Bookings, EHR connector, AccountGuard, and Compliance Manager are some of the major contributors to that. Here are some of the capabilities that they make available:
- Coordinating care plans and teams
- Scheduling appointments and sending booking confirmation and reminders
- Conducting virtual visits with the ability to invite other care team members
- Integrating electronic health records, collecting compliant responses directly from patients, and automating clinical documentation
- Structuring clinical documents into interconnected FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)
- Synchronizing management efforts and receiving real-time status reports
- Securely communicating information to the right people
- Customizing all these capabilities to customers’ unique environments
How Microsoft Cloud ensures better experiences, insights, and outcomes
The wide scope and scale of healthcare technologies offer utility and benefit in addressing patients’ struggles. And what’s more important, for healthcare providers, digital solutions are transitioning from “nice-to-haves” to “must-haves.” Many companies have found themselves needing to adopt a cloud-first mindset and hybrid cloud environment.
When deploying Microsoft Cloud solutions for patient-centered care, it’s important to remember what patients value the most: convenience. According to McKinsey, convenience is seen as the biggest success factor, followed by trust and impact on health outcomes.
Here is how Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare can support providers’ pursuit of convenience:
- Personalized care, which considers attributes related to the patient’s medical history and previous interactions
- Better patient access, with the ability to view health information and interact with the care team
- A 360° view of data to rapidly analyze each unique case
What kind of value can healthcare organizations extract from Microsoft Cloud?
The cloud enables healthcare organizations to work together, collaborating on research, planning, in-person and remote care, and more.
As for the benefits of Microsoft Cloud within the organization, we’ll narrow the list down to three:
- Maximizes your cloud investment - You’ll be able to drive down costs by optimizing processes and creating positive change. What’s more, a better understanding of your operations and customers will create business value.
- Decreases manual processes - The cloud helps automate workflows and streamlines interactions with patients with more actionable results. For example, care teams can get context about patients without manual data entry or requests.
- Protects health information - It creates a holistic approach to data security, privacy, and compliance. An important contributing factor is the proper centralization and security of patient data.
- Boosts adoption of leading cloud technology - Microsoft Cloud gives providers unprecedented scaling, platform integration, and access advantages.
Challenges of implementing Cloud Integration
The advantageous side of cloud computing is accompanied by objections and concerns. Integrating Microsoft Cloud can lead to more complexities than solutions if it is rushed and poorly managed.
We’ve identified several key areas for concern that can cause issues for providers:
- Security - Data availability and integrity, as well as information confidentiality and correct access rights, are the major challenges in cloud infrastructure.
- Compliance standards - The suite is advertised to have the most comprehensive set of compliance and industry standards. However, any standardized compliance framework needs to be reviewed for specific organizations.
- Ease of use - Digital literacy levels vary across demographics (for both staff and customers). Some solutions may need to be deliberately simplified to be inclusive.
- Resistance from patients and/or employees - Innovation is not always seen as an improvement. Even when it fits into the objectives, goals, and technologies of the already existing organization, people have a tendency to squash newness of any kind.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we can make sure that your digital transformation goes smoothly. Convergine offers consultative expertise, ensuring best-in-class Microsoft Cloud implementation and deployment. Also, you can count on continuous customer support and will be the first in line for updates and news.
