Virtual care in a post-pandemic world: three key priorities for healthcare leaders

While this advanced view of acute and chronic care is on the horizon, organizations need robust data-sharing infrastructures and a standard for technologies to work together across platforms and locations to be successful. The Future Health Index 2021 report found that two of the biggest barriers to the adoption of digital health technologies were difficulties with data management (44%) and lack of interoperability and data standards across technology platforms (37%). The future of virtual care depends on secure, vendor-agnostic, well-integrated solutions, turning disparate data into actionable insights.

Further, organizations need to ensure they have the right infrastructures in place to protect the continuous flow of data or risk critical gaps in patient care or even security breaches. Leveraging open APIs and approved standards like IHE-HL7 can help facilitate data exchange across multiple sources and vendors across the continuum of care so healthcare providers can deliver the right care at the right time with minimal friction. By ensuring that technologies are interoperable across platforms and geographic locations, healthcare systems can better protect the data that flows throughout their system and provide increased security against malicious attacks. Health systems need a partner who takes a proactive approach to protecting sensitive health information across devices, systems and settings so administrators, healthcare providers and patients have confidence about how care is delivered.

Integrated, secure systems are particularly important in ICU settings. For example, without a strong backbone for smooth data integration, intensivists and clinicians can only see what is happening in front of them instead of making informed decisions based on a holistic view of a patient's health. Remote care for patients in the ICU, known as tele-ICUs, relies on continuous data capture, advanced data visualization and predictive analytics to enable proactive rather than reactive care, and to help detect patient deterioration trends faster.

The power of interoperable solutions is so much more than improving the quantity of data - it's also about data quality to feed future innovation. By breaking down walls to siloed data and aggregating that data into lakes of actionable patient insights, doors to further innovation - such as artificial intelligence - can be opened up to help advance more confident clinical decision-making.

A health system built to be truly interoperable and secure is a health system that supports and secures a patient's seamless journey across healthcare settings - and it's one that can evolve to meet the changing needs of tomorrow.