How a new approach to Electronic Health Records could accelerate the digital transformation
#4 - and a quick look at the digital health market trends
This week we're brushing the surface of a complex topic: healthcare data. You will learn more about how a new approach to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) could be the next revolution in healthcare. We also look at Q1 on the digital health market and possible trajectories for the rest of the year.
In this week's edition:
openEHR: a boost in digital transformation?
Opinion: Sean Doolan on the missed opportunities of digital health
Market trends: Q1 results and perspectives for the digital health market
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Building patient-centred ecosystems of services
Alastair Allen on how openEHR will accelerate digital transformation
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Have you ever wondered why your EHR doesn't move with you when you change providers after moving houses?
If you are a healthcare professional, you probably find that your hospital’s EHR system gives you more work and doesn’t talk to other systems.
CTO of Better, Alastair Allen, speaks of a critical element that will play a transformative role in a comprehensive blog: openEHR.
What is openEHR?
Pronounced “open-air”, openEHR is an open standard specification in health informatics. It describes the management, storage, retrieval and exchange of health data in EHRs. In openEHR, all health data for a person is stored in a "one lifetime", vendor-independent, person-centred EHR (definition: Wikipedia).
Put simply, the data is separated from applications.
Why is it important?
The data-centricity of the openEHR model enables healthcare systems to create patient-centred services ecosystems.
The immense majority of software applications have their own architectures. The data is an integral part of the application, and each provider handles its own data management. This means vast amounts of data (often duplicated) sit across various apps used within the same healthcare system. In this setting, data exchanges can be challenging.
Interoperability brings a partial solution to this issue. However, patching up 100s of applications will not reduce the complexity and scale of the problem.
A data-centric architecture
OpenEHR reorganises the overall ecosystem architecture, moving from an app-centric to a data-centric one. This results in
More straightforward transactions and interactions between systems
Enhance modularity
Eliminate data silos.
Illustration sourced from the Ernst & Young report: “How will you design information architecture to unlock the power of data?”
Is it already been used?
Yes, some examples include:
So what is preventing adoption?
Mostly, a perception issue.
📌 Many CIOs and healthcare leaders believe that no app is running on openEHR
There are indeed a limited number of apps running on openEHR for the time being. However, an ever-growing ecosystem of no-code/low-code applications will allow citizen developers to build applications quickly.
📌 Resistance to shifting from an existing app-centric architecture to a data-centric one
There is no one-size-fits-all. A step by step approach is required: modernising legacy systems whilst introducing new data-centric assets progressively.
📌 FHIR and openEHR are perceived as competitive standards that have similar functions
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR - pronounced "fire") is a standard describing data formats/elements and an API for exchanging EHRs. FHIR facilitates interoperability by supporting messaging between systems, whilst openEHR supports the persistence of the data. Both standards can be used in combination to solve customer problems.
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Going deeper
🎧 Podcast - “What is openEHR and What are Open Ecosystems in Healthcare?” by Hanna Pohjonen for Faces of Digital Health
📰 Blog - “FHIR v openEHR - concreta” by Woland's cat
📋 Report - “How will you design information architecture to unlock the power of data?” by Ernst & Young
Provider-focused disruption
Sean Doolan on why digital health is missing opportunities to make a difference to health practitioners
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Investment in healthcare technology reached a new high in 2022. However, increasingly sophisticated technologies struggle to deliver game-changing benefits at scale. In this article, Sean Doolan offers a perspective on where things might have gone wrong and what to do about it.
Status quo
Tech giants and digital health innovators have been trying to reinvent healthcare without taking into account the environment of healthcare practitioners. They also have been attempting to replace them without much success and at the price of scepticism.
Real-life problems
Technology should enhance the work of healthcare staff and fit into their workflows. The focus should be to disrupt healthcare’s legacy IT companies that keep providers operating on old-fashioned systems (e.g. EHRs, medical imaging databases).
These technologies were not designed to simplify workflows. Instead, they steal clinical attention, create data silos and prevent the adoption of new technologies.
Changing approach: provider-focused disruption
Sean Doolan calls for recentering innovation on healthcare practitioners and building solutions to augment their skills and capabilities. Tech should focus on automating repetitive tasks to allow clinicians to focus on what they are best at: providing care.
Where to start
Radiology is an excellent place to start as the field heavily relies on systems still too often plagued by poorly conceived software. Instead of replacing radiologists with AI, workflows should better integrate AI to augment clinical expertise.
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Going deeper
This article echoes a publication about AI we explored a couple of weeks ago.
Is digital health headed for a market correction?
Taking the temperature of the market
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After the 2021 breakthrough in funding, 2022 seems to be on a different trajectory. Below is a selection of articles providing different horizons for the year.
🧐 Uncertainty
After a chilly start of the year investment-wise, Rock Health forecasts an uncertain rest of the year.
⌛ End of an era
The fundamentals of the value proposition of digital health are solid, but Politico observes a return to rationalism.
🧱 Consolidation
Fierce healthcare says analysts predict a consolidation of the digital health market in 2022 and that priorities will be reshuffled.
That's it for this week!
Thanks for reading this 4th edition; I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or feedback, please reply directly to this email. You can also follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
See you next week!
Léa