Digital transformation has been the primary strategy for companies across every industry over the last couple of years. In the healthcare industry, in particular, there has been significant disruption from social and macroeconomic crises, and the need to modernize systems and incorporate modern technologies has been higher than ever.
According to a recent industry survey, 97% of healthcare executives believe that technological advances are a reliable way to inform their strategies, more so than social, economic, or political trends. However, as these organizations continue to digitize their services and embrace modern architectures, they also need to be aware of their impact on the customer experience.
In this article, we’ll explore some things preventing healthcare organizations from improving their digital patient care and explain the benefits of doing so.
Challenges of Legacy Infrastructure in Healthcare
A key reason why healthcare organizations have begun to increase their digital transformation efforts is due to the limitations of legacy infrastructure. Some of the challenges that legacy systems pose to companies in the healthcare industry include:
Restrictive Customer Journey
The customer experience in healthcare encompasses the entire patient experience, including hospital wait times, to how easily patients can find essential details using online portals. Unfortunately, legacy systems can be slow to update and make accessing critical information an even slower process, restricting the customer journey.
The result is increased wait times at healthcare facilities, difficulty accessing patient information, unnecessary office visits, and difficulty embracing modern customer channels such as wearables that monitor patient health.
A Digitization Gap
Healthcare organizations ready to embrace digitalization may have a large gap to solve. Many companies find themselves in a situation where some content is paper-based, and some content is already available digitally. Legacy systems can make bridging this gap and digitizing the entire customer journey throughout the healthcare system challenging as patients may want to access all of their relevant records digitally. However, some of it may still be located in a paper system at a doctor’s office.
Siloed Systems
Legacy software can cause silos that negatively impact the patient experience. Modern healthcare systems require data to be shared between departments. However, many legacy systems were created for a singular purpose, and unifying that data can prove borderline impossible, which means that patients cannot access the content that matters most to them.
High Maintenance and Limited Support
Many legacy systems suffer from limited support options and high maintenance costs. The challenges of maintaining legacy code are compounded when there aren’t enough employees knowledgeable in these outdated systems. Also, as time goes on, these systems include high costs since organizations constantly have to deal with security issues and upgrades that can make it hard for them to provide the level of digital patient care customers today expect.
Moving Towards an Omnichannel Experience (Managing the Content Supply Chain)
Healthcare companies need to embrace modern technologies that make managing the content supply chain easier and help them create an omnichannel patient experience. Here are some of the benefits that modernizing digital patient care can provide:
Adopting Modern Trends
Healthcare has been improved through the emergence of trends such as remote patient diagnostics and telehealth. With these approaches, healthcare professionals can diagnose and prescribe care for patients remotely, saving both parties time and money.
Modernizing digital patient care can help healthcare companies to implement these trends efficiently as it allows them to deliver content in the form of video experiences and live streams to patients when and where they need it.
Consolidated Healthcare Records
Healthcare organizations often keep patient records and documentation in an assortment of locations. With a modern system at their disposal, healthcare companies can easily consolidate patient records, eliminating data silos and allowing patients to access those records when they want to.
Connected Systems and a Cohesive Customer Experience
Eliminating data silos enables healthcare organizations to connect all of their systems and deliver a cohesive experience for the patent. For example, patients need to be able to log in to an online portal and easily access all of their insurance claims, doctor visits, scheduled checkups and more information. With a modernized patient care system, healthcare companies can implement this as all relevant systems can be integrated.
Personalized Customer Experience
Patients today expect a personalized experience no matter what they’re doing. Whether they’re shopping for a new laptop or accessing items related to their health. Organizations need to replicate the high-quality bedside manner they use to treat patients by providing a personalized customer experience.
For example, pharmacies can enable each patient to access previous purchases and interactions with their doctor, as well as provide recommendations about when they need to have another visit or refill a prescription.
Better Management of the Content Supply Chain
Modernizing digital patient care also includes better management of the content supply chain. The content supply chain refers to the people and processes involved in content creation, distribution, and management. For healthcare companies, this means having a system that enables them to publish relevant content such as healthcare tips, estimated wait times, and digitized patient records to enhance the customer experience. In keeping with the current customer expectations, this content must also be published on numerous channels, including tablets, smartwatches, and online portals.
Modernize the Patient Experience with Content Bloom
Healthcare businesses that want to modernize and improve the patient experience must embrace concepts such as MACH architecture and composability. However, incorporating these new technologies can be even more complex without proper support.
Content Bloom offers an enterprise digital consultancy and years of expertise in the areas of content management, CMS migration, and custom development — everything healthcare companies need to modernize digital patient care.
With our assistance, you can select the right CMS from leading headless CMS and composable digital experience platform solutions to help deliver the level of digital experiences patients require. Break down silos, manage all content affairs from a central location and provide the personalization that customers expect. Plus, we can assist in ensuring that all relevant data and records are migrated to the new system without worrying that issues may crop up down the road.
A global leader in medical technology, ICU Medical, needed to consolidate all of its systems into a single platform after making an acquisition. They needed to deliver a consistent and personalized experience for their customers, both old and new. With Content Bloom’s assistance during the CMS selection, migrations, and implementation processes, they could provide that experience.
Discover how we can help your healthcare company just as we helped ICU Medical with our assortment of services.
