How to integrate EHRs into the new wave of data-driven healthcare solutions

Between digital advancements and the unprecedented amount of patient data, it’s clear that there is still incredible potential to improve care delivery. The question is: How do we utilize this data in a way that better serves patients, providers, and our rapidly changing healthcare ecosystem?

The short answer: Collaboration. 

Fragmented healthcare delivery: an outdated approach

“Health care silos — which block communication between emergency departments, primary care practices, dialysis units and other functions — are bad for patients and society. They inhibit coordinated care which contributes to high costs and poor outcomes.” (Harvard Business Review)

Fragmented organizational structures and the lack of shared patient information between care providers, clinics, and hospitals drain limited resources and worsen quality of care. By using digital solutions, however, we can minimize and mitigate the isolated approach which has marked traditional care delivery, and data is a critical piece in this puzzle.

EHRs: A data source to connect it all

Electronic health records, known by the acronym EHR, collect and store patient data in digital format (e.g., care plans, health status, medical history, insurance details). This makes an EHR system a powerful tool in an ideal position to substantially improve care delivery…if that system acts interoperably.

By concentrating EHRs as the central data source into innovative telehealth solutions, we have the opportunity to reduce silos in healthcare and offer holistic, seamless care delivery to patients that benefits all stakeholders—patients, care providers, hospitals, and healthcare networks.

Integrating Digital Tools: EHRs and the “Front Door”, Digital Consultations and Remote Patient Monitoring

A digital “Front Door”, Digital Consultations and Remote Patient Monitoring make sure the patients have one single entry point and digital interaction possibilities to access all healthcare services. As the top telehealth platform provider in Northern Europe, our white-label healthcare solution, Platform24, provides patients with the care they need (routine, acute, episodic, and chronic), when they need it and wherever they need it. 

Because a patient-clinician interface and the EHR system both collect and organize data, it’s an obvious and natural partnership. To enable interaction between the patients and the healthcare providers, we at 24Health have already begun collaborating with several leading EHR providers to expand their established system into a centralized patient information source within our Platform24 solution.

Enhancing the care delivery ecosystem: A symbiotic endeavor

The rewards of this kind of collaboration benefit everyone: the EHR System Provider, the Telehealth Solution, and most importantly, the doctors and patients. Because we share, any existing and input health data is freely accessible and adds value to the care delivery ecosystem by improving the following:

• Quality of data
• Quality of care
• Patient journeys

Improved Data: All intake forms, remote monitoring, interpretation of test results, digital consultations and patient-reported information from the solution is shared with and can be reused by the EHR system. On the other side, all patient history records, diagnostics, or lab results from EHRs are accessible through the platform to care providers. This leads to high quality and integrated data for all care personnel and more holistic, less-siloed data for better analysis of population health.

Improved Care: By integrating EHRs and Platform24, we can more efficiently collect and use patient data, which means improved automation for triage, assisted-diagnosis, and personalized care tools as well as reduced costs for remote patient monitoring. Additionally, with information gaps closing between GPs and speciality providers, care personnel can detect variances and disease earlier and intervene sooner as a team.

Improved Patient Journey: All care services and workflow tools (scheduling, questionnaires, digital consultations, etc.) are conveniently accessed through the “front door,” and patient data is then neatly stored in one central record. Patients can chat with their physician, measure and enter data into the system, physicians can consult each other – all within the same platform. There is no perceived switch in application between Platform24 and the EHR system for patients or for care personnel. No longer must patients waste time filling out the same forms again and again or deciphering confusing non-relevant forms. Their data is available to both themselves and their providers in a personalized and synthesized way that is easy to understand, so that they can finally be a true partner in their own care journey.

We have the tools for this continuity of care that has yet to be seen in our current healthcare ecosystem. To achieve this, however, seamless and shared access of data is critical, and we must work together to integrate these industry-transforming digital solutions.

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Does this topic interest you? Read more here about the digital front door, or if you’re an EHR System Provider and want to collaborate, please contact us.

Written in collaboration with: Amy Harris