Modern business process of healthcare

According to innovative high tech solutions of modern healthcare that produce adaptable systems more close to patients needs and demands and service sufficiently more than one lifestyle in the same society. Moreover, open the wide door for innovation and investment opportunities might be good for society and medical labour force to create more jobs with widen taxes yield. In this point would like to refer that investment opportunities and entrepreneurship going to be discussed in coming posts, but at the moment business process in healthcare cycle takes more interest in order to explain the wide differences among traditional and modern process and how much that reflect on the final received values and even nature and patient behaviour acclimatization later.

In previous post, we discussed according to system complexity many of new and innovative services were not existed as electronic health record (EHR) whether hospital and patient health record that enable medical workers and physicians to track and follow patient history everywhere. It means records can easily travel with patient to show clearly history of medication and medical treatments. This kind of new working pattern among patients and medical workers create other new parallel records package carrying more participation from the patient side.

Electronic Personal Health Record solution (ePHR): enable consumers to record and selectively share their own healthcare information and their loved ones in a secure manner to be considered later in medication process.

Electronic Clinician Health Record solution (eCHR): enable physicians and healthcare providers to securely access healthcare information collated from any number of trusted sources relating to an individual patient in a structured and easily accessible way.

Informatics platform to enable all data be stored and retrieval via ePHR & eCHR according to industrial data standards and modelling.

Using of robots in rehabilitation therapy for victims of stroke. Robots being built by a team at MIT are able to help deliver therapy with the promise of reducing elbow and shoulder impairments in stroke victims [Riezenman, 2008]

The da Vinci Surgical System give the ability to surgeon to minor invasive surgeries be carried out particularly in urological and gynaecological speciality which need high accuracy level in implementation. Surgeons capable of viewing 3-D images for different body parts and determine exactly area of work without ever misleading mentioned.

The Cyber Knife Stereotactic Radio-surgery System used by physicians to deliver high doses of radiation with great accuracy, in which gives the ability to do less incision surgery to previous opened tumours and scars. Thus, the technique is enable to much less exposure of sound tissues for the radiation and increase the capabilities to work in different tumour sites at the time.

These examples showing the main big complexity of many healthcare procedures and working execution processes for sure these complications not for patients but main part of it closely touch medical workers that to be more adaptable of all new. Also the whole cycle transformed from going of patient to the medical provider physically into share data online on portal systems and phone calls notifications that make access gate of medical system more convenient to certain society sectors and highly effective from other side in end results. Full health :) 

Complexity of healthcare systems

With dramatic improvement in networks & associated technologies related to transmit images and data globally, that indeed leading to revolution in healthcare industry has never been greater. The amount of applications and numerous software that serve medical purposes have become branched and modified recently than before and also could not be controlled easily in front of high demands from society to services and needs. There are four major ways in which Information Technology (IT) will revolutionize health care, [Gupta, 2008]:

More offshore services: successive increment& continuously growth in the diagnostic services; particularly imaging such as X-rays, mammography with consultations through specialist or by Tele-medicine application. We are going to explain Tele-medicine in details later. Also offshore services including ambulance service, in-site hospitals and medical convoys. Therefore; limitation of service is endless according to problem size and level of people injuries.

Integration of health information systems: integration object is restricted mainly in creation one truthful record would be able to travel with patients everywhere. As a result of different working systems in past and implemented software codes were main data confusion and errors with set of conflicts came from misunderstanding, human mistakes and system errors. Although many systems working effectively & individually but integration is above all to build one data current road used as main back up of patient history for medical provider everywhere.

Drug safety monitoring on a global scale: this point is little carries mutual point between patient and medical workers including clinical physicians; whether drug safety alerts provide all data for clinically use about medicines administered by patient still there are a lot of evaluations could be measured depending on physician and pharmacist knowledge and experience, that mean system give you merely information but never give you how it works with certain patient or formerly feedback what must depending on history or other drug-drug interactions. Simply; you can look at Medwatch, program applied in US is that enough to prevent medicines interactions? Honestly not 100%, still human factor engineering and how data interaction is most important. None can deny the impact of information on working processes and patients, but human factor activity forms wider part of drug safety and monitoring.

More high quality information to doctors and patients: Websites such as WebMD have become a source of information for patients and doctors. These sites receive contributions of medical materials from doctors and scientists, and are enhanced by the automated search tools. Many such sites draw materials from on-line text books and medical journals.

Medical system working patterns and enormously development put medical worker under burden before patient; burden of acclimatization to build maximum knowledge of operations and services. According to gained knowledge and experience of working system which forwardly build good trust and fast solving skill with patient and other involved departments. Therefore; this idea pushed some countries to build one road of medical data supply what is called X-Road. This idea is not new or invention it came actually from double document account systems to uniform all data resources on the level of state but the way have been executed innovative and new in network technologies domain. Full health :) 

Conceptual frame work of innovation

As formerly mentioned; Innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations [UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2005]. From this definition concluded that innovation as a technique is not only create new different or significantly improved products or services, also it is more closer to the way going to be implemented, in formal way called methodology.

 UNESCO makes the distinction among the four types of innovation as follows:

Product innovation: introduction of a good or service that is new or significantly improved with respect to its characteristics or intended uses. This includes significant improvements in technical specifications, components and materials, incorporated software, user friendliness or other functional characteristics.

Process innovation: implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software. The customer does not usually pay directly for process, but the process is required to deliver a product or service and to manage the relationship with the various stakeholders.

Marketing innovation: implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing.

Organizational innovation: implementation of a new organizational method in the firm’s business practices, workplace organization or external relations.

Clearly; different forms of innovation serve the innovation process itself and cover most of work domains as end result, procedure, identify end result in order to get proper and accurate goal achievement. Whereas that paying effort separately does not produce awaited end value could be received. Healthcare innovation carries little differences belong to conceptual work concepts; product, process, or structure [Varkey, et al., 2008]. The products is what patient paying for whether product or medical service with other opinions including procedures and delivery routes. Structural innovation usually affects the internal and external infrastructure, and creates new business models;

Healthcare innovation can be defined as the introduction of a new concept, idea, service, process, or product aimed at improving treatment, diagnosis, education, outreach, prevention and research, and with the long term goals of improving quality, safety, outcomes, efficiency and costs.

Information technologies still considered the key for whole process of innovation in healthcare. According to Gupta (2008);

‘while hospitals and other care providers have long been quick to adopt breakthrough technology in medical devices, procedures and treatments, far less attention has focused on innovations in networking and communications. This is partly because of concerns about breaches in security and patient privacy, and because healthcare until recently was a service always performed locally and in person’ full health :)