How open standards for health will drive innovation
MedicalDirector’s CEO, Matthew Bardsley, opens up discussion around how General Practice can transform core clinical systems and embrace interoperability for a more personalised approach to patient-centric care.
Imagine walking to your next GP appointment to see your doctor sitting in a room with no windows, a pre-conceived cardboard cut out of a person, with patients struggling to try and fit themselves through. Sounds farcical? Well sadly, the concept represents the current approach many General Practices take in terms of using core systems that lack interoperability or a personalised approach to patient-centric care.
While everyone sees the opportunity to innovate in healthcare, many remain overwhelmed by the rigidity of this ‘cardboard cutout’ framework, and say change is all too hard, costly, difficult to understand or too risky.
If General Practice is to be the cornerstone of healthcare for the wider population, then it’s time to ensure standardised, efficient and open systems are in place – which encourage innovation and facilitate a system of interoperability. And with more widely accepted standards, you can also minimise risks, while maximising returns, which can drive even further innovation downstream.
The more I travel, the more I’m starting to see the increased need for driving innovation and accelerating healthcare efficiencies at a global level. In my recent trips to the US and UK, I gained some interesting insights as to the broader systemic issues the healthcare industry faces today, as well as the different models of care and different industry pressure points.
It made me realise how we need to act fast and act now, to ensure these healthcare platforms are open and operate to the standards that enable better, more patient-centric outcomes, while being part of an efficient, secure and streamlined ecosystem of interoperability.
If we are serious about driving and accelerating patient engagement, we need to work within these open systems in a collaborative way, partnering with the right healthcare innovators to further enable that change. To do that in a safe and secure way, as an industry, we need to recognise that General Practice software needs a radical overhaul in the way in which it operates. We need to embrace a more sustainable, flexible and scalable model that best supports healthcare now and in the future.
This article by Matthew Bardsley was originally published on LinkedIn.
