How Healthcare Technology Drives Scalable Innovation

Healthcare’s communications ecosystem is growing more complex every day. IT teams everywhere face the daunting task of unifying and rationalizing those systems, while also scaling them to surging demand and securing them against cyberthreats. How can your team deliver? Care communications solutions and emerging technology for automation in healthcare may be the key.

Maximizing the fluency, mobility and security of clinical data remains one the most critical focus areas for healthcare IT teams. But even as demand grows for easy implementations, streamlined integrations and closely managed TCO, numerous challenges still stand in the way of modernizing and rationalizing the patchwork systems that care teams rely on to communicate and collaborate: 

• Evolving interoperability demands: Both care teams and their patients increasingly expect their personal devices to be a key part of their experience in their organization. As more and more healthcare providers expect mobile devices, powerful analytics and apps to be part of their clinical workflows, healthcare IT teams are under pressure to ensure that a soaring volume of clinical communications and patient data can flow smoothly across a rapidly diversifying set of devices.

• Complex compliance requirements: As care teams rely more and more on their own devices, IT teams are being challenged to balance innovation in care communication technology with protection of patient health information (PHI). New care communications systems need to create a seamless flow of PHI to and from clinicians’ smartphones, while also ensuring that patient data is rigorously protected at all times. 

• Data and privacy security: Healthcare technology systems are swiftly shifting to connected care models. To keep pace, healthcare organizations’ IT infrastructure must meet increasingly stringent industry standards for encryption and data security within systems where more and more interconnected devices share large volumes of PHI. Advanced security features are fast becoming the gold standard for devices that generate and share sensitive clinical data, like connected cardiopulmonary technologies.

Even as the challenges of compliance, security and scalability increase, the costs of falling behind in the effort to future-proof healthcare IT systems is rising even more rapidly. Data breaches are increasingly damaging and expensive for healthcare organizations. Healthcare data breaches have increased 196% since 2018,¹ while the cost per breach has gone up 12% in the last 5 years, to an average of $3.92 million.² Compliance failures due to improper handling of patient data continue to negatively impact enterprises across the industry. Healthcare organizations paid $13 million in HIPAA fines in 2019 alone.³

How to build IT infrastructure for the future of healthcare

Healthcare organizations everywhere must quickly evolve and adapt to the flexible, intuitive and user-centric platforms that already define the way patients and care teams expect to connect with one another. Preparing for the future of healthcare now means creating technology infrastructure built to meet those expectations at rapidly increasing scale, while also maintaining rigorous compliance, acknowledging shifting budget parameters and minimizing disruption to clinical workflows. 

Several advanced clinical communications solutions already empower IT teams to build that kind of scalable, interoperable and secure foundation of healthcare technology. These innovative solutions are designed to automate clinical workflows, enable seamlessly connected care teams to deliver proactive care and facilitate instant secure data transmission from the bedside to the EMR.

Mobile platforms enhance clinical communications and collaboration

Innovative mobile communications solutions now make it possible to meet both your care team’s device expectations and your organization’s stringent security requirements. 

Intuitive app-driven, smartphone-based platforms enable secure, real-time information sharing from the bedside, to care teams, to the EMR, and back. Platforms like the Voalte^® Mobile Solution deliver alerts directly to the appropriate clinician or care team, helping them identify patient issues sooner and accelerate treatment and recovery time.

These solutions give healthcare providers a range of communications options for coordinating patient care, while also supporting HIPAA compliance and shielding PHI from disclosure. They also scale seamlessly to your workforce and shifting patient volumes. Nearly 50,000 clinicians are already operating on the Voalte platform.⁴

Connected Hillrom^™ devices deliver best-in-class security

Healthcare technologies across the clinic now capture and transmit PHI, from patient monitoring devices that wirelessly connect to the EMR, to diagnostic cardiology platforms designed to streamline bedside data collection. These connected devices must meet the highest standard of PHI protection. 

Our connected care technologies, like the Welch Allyn^® Connex^® line of vital signs solutions, meet the industry's most rigorous cybersecurity standards to protect your patients’ data and your network. Select Hillrom technologies integrate robust security features that include credential-driven login, streamlined single sign-on (SSO) and single- or two-factor authentication that enables organizations to determine what level of security is required for each clinical scenario.

Professional services facilitate complex integrations

Augmenting your healthcare IT team with expert support can be a critical step during new healthcare technology implementations. 

At Hillrom, our technical experts help IT leaders enhance clinical workflows, centralize system architecture, tighten security and manage system hardware, while our clinical experts collaborate with your nursing leaders to create seamless connections between care teams, patients and technologies. Together, we help your team focus on ensuring that new enhancements like automation in healthcare are successfully implemented and continually optimized. 

Ready to start future-proofing your healthcare technology systems?

The first step is creating a flexible, scalable foundation for your technology infrastructure, one built with rigorous security and compliance measures and innovated with your care teams in mind. Contact a Hillrom expert to learn how we can start building it together. 

Explore more Hillrom clinical communications solutions

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5 Solutions for Simpler, Smarter Clinical Communications

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Solving Inefficiency in Clinical Communications

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