Faced with an aging population and an increase in long-term chronic illnesses across the region, healthcare organisations in EMEA must adapt to a new patient-centric system of healthcare, according to new independent research from EMC and IDC.
“Transforming Health: Enabling Integrated Healthcare” suggests that a new healthcare system – where diverse and geographically dispersed healthcare providers collaborate to treat patients – is much more suitable for the treatment of long-term illnesses than the current hospital-centric system.
According to the IDC-EMC study, an integrated care delivery model can increase patient safety and help control costs for healthcare providers across the region.
Importantly, the research has revealed that IT – and especially document lifecycle management capabilities – will play a key role in this transformation, with many healthcare providers in the region already looking to invest in key technologies.
IT – in particular patient data integration – is seen as an integral strategic platform for the delivery of better healthcare outcomes for patients in EMEA:
* Patient care and satisfaction enhancement top priority for hospitals in EMEA: 4.1 for Western Europe, 4.4 for Middle-East and Africa;
* The IT organisation’s contribution to business goals (3.8 in WE and 4.1 in MEA) is rated as more important than reducing operational costs (3.8 in WE and 4 in MEA) and procurement efficiency (3.8 in WE and 3.9 in MEA);
* 51% of hospital executives – (46% in WE and 57% in MEA) expect to see their organisation’s total IT budget increase in 2014, while only 7.5% in WE and 9% in MEA expect to see it decrease; and
* Integrated and secure access to data and applications (4.2 in WE and 4.4 MEA) ranked as most important hospital IT priority, well above lowering the cost of IT (3.9 in WE and 3.6 in MEA).
The IDC-EMC study notes that when it comes to delivering on integrated patient care, hospitals need to be able to effectively and securely share information with other healthcare providers such as GPs and specialists. Document management capabilities will be essential for this as they allow organisations to archive, combine, extract and analyse patient information in an integrated way:
* 56% of hospital executives – 71% in WE and 46% in MEA already have a document lifecycle management solution in place;
* Hospital executives in WE that plan to invest in document life-cycle management solutions in the next 12 months are also more likely to invest in Electronic Health Records (EHR) (50%); and
* However, only 7% of WE hospital executives plan to invest in a new document life-cycle management solution over the next 12 months.
The research has revealed that several barriers may be holding back the wider adoption of document lifecycle management solutions to enable integrated patient care. This is particularly true of budget allocations which remain focussed on maintaining legacy systems:
* 46% of 2014 IT budget allocation in EMEA – 54% in WE and 39% in MEA – is set aside for maintenance of systems; and
* Only 18.5% – 19% in WE and 18% in ME – is set aside for enhancements or upgrades and 19% to innovate: 12% in WE and 23% in MEA.
Nkuli Mbundu, enterprise account manager: Information Intelligence Group at EMC Southern Africa, comments: “Document lifecycle management solutions can provide the glue necessary to enable integrated healthcare by decoupling structured and unstructured data from proprietary and open applications alike, including EMR, EHR and departmental applications for example, allowing them to be easily transferred to and accessed by the healthcare professionals that need them.
“This enables a more efficient, cost effective healthcare system and most importantly puts the patient at the centre of the health nexus; vastly improving clinical outcomes. The key now for hospitals in EMEA is to ensure that their IT budgets are being invested effectively to create a long-term solution to the challenges of healthcare.”
Massimiliano Claps, research director at IDC Health Insights, adds: “The aging population and increased prevalence of long-term conditions will have a significant impact on health and social care. A sustainable service delivery model that can cope with non-communicable diseases must aim to provide appropriate care. The reoriented healthcare system will ensure the future sustainability of service delivery by coordinating all actors across the value chain.
“This integrated care delivery will have to be enabled by cross-enterprise information sharing. Document life-cycle solutions, such as the EMC Documentum Integrated Patient Record solution suite, can support structured and unstructured information capture, archival, and access across multiple clinical applications.”