Innovative technologies are key to evolving hospital efficiencies

In 2016, we saw advancements realising efficiencies across a variety of industries. Healthcare should be no exception, yet we see physicians expressing concern about the future role of data and technology in their day-to-day operations. In the recent Philips Future Health Index, 54% of Australian healthcare professionals expressed concern about data overload from connected devices and the impact it will have on their ability to perform their core role: the provision of care.

With the volume of data in healthcare growing, it has never been more vital to offer physicians the appropriate tools to analyse this data and act quickly to accurately diagnose and treat patients. As an industry, we need to turn this amassed data into an opportunity for efficiency improvements through enterprise IT solutions. In order to maximise the skill and expertise of physicians, the hospital system should be able to rely on integrated, innovative technologies and adaptive intelligence allowing us to streamline workflows and efficiencies in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness.

One area where Philips is working to do exactly that is through our IntelliSpace Portfolio. We launched this solution in Australia in direct response to what healthcare professionals told us would meet their day-to-day needs. It is an integrated informatics solution giving physicians access to precise and actionable data.

1. Access to actionable data

Through the IntelliSpace Portfolio, physicians have an integrated tool to accurately record and give meaning to data, improving operational capabilities and ultimately productivity, while minimising the ‘data overload’ concerns.

2. Accurate forecasting

Physicians are able to set up KPIs and targets to track efficiency and improve day-to-day workflow and patient care. In an environment historically governed by individual patient needs, this type of treatment and technology allow for far greater accuracy in forecasting.

3. Patient journey informatics

The IntelliSpace suite facilitates advanced information management across the enterprise; storing, distributing and quantitatively analysing images, while ensuring access across devices in healthcare environments. Ultimately it offers a unique, chronological, and panoramic overview of patients throughout their journey, allowing physicians to act quickly and accurately based on meaningful application of data.

The IntelliSpace Portfolio also integrates a range of IT systems found across a patient’s care team, facilitating collaboration by enriching the presentation of the patient data for each physician involved in the patient’s care journey.

4. Imaging capabilities for diagnostic accuracy

This technology facilitates accessible, actionable data across care teams at all times, enabling better collaboration and quicker turnaround. The system enhances imaging capabilities, seeing care teams diagnose more accurately and treat more effectively.

Importantly, the system is vastly improving the accessibility and accuracy of medical imaging and data, communicating it to a range of care professionals in a meaningful way.

5. Improved workflow

Employing cutting edge technology and clinical expertise, Philips IntelliSpace works to enable better financial and operational outcomes for healthcare providers by developing solutions in a scalable and interoperable way. With a funding model based on the studies consumed, it’s important that we offer a solution that improves the efficiency and accuracy of reports produced by care teams. With some departments seeing an average reporting turnaround of 2 weeks, the IntelliSpace Portfolio enables this turnaround to be reduced to an average of 1-day.

The IntelliSpace Portfolio enhances  physicians’ ability to synthesize, action and communicate patient information and imaging, reducing the time patients wait for results. Facilitating a faster end-to-end patient process, the IntelliSpace suite supports clinicians to deliver fast, high quality care, achieving crucial high patient turnover.

The health system faces a need to reduce the time invested in each patient, while not just maintaining, but improving quality and accuracy of care. We are listening to our customers and responding to needs for agile and integrated technology to support the standard of care they can bring to patients. Our engineers are working to move ahead of the pace of technological evolution, facilitating the transformation of healthcare from the diagnosis and treatment of illness, and ultimately shifting the system to support the prevention of illness in our population.

*Kevin Barrow, Managing Director of Philips Australia and New Zealand, is leading Philips with a focus on delivering innovative health technology solutions.