Creating a Digital Framework for 21st Century Patient Engagement and Care Coordination

By George Mathew, MD, chief medical officer, North America, DXC Technology.

George Matthew

Patients, like all consumers, are more digitally aware and connected than ever before, as they continue to embrace the latest mobile devices and wearables. These devices, as well as the increasing availability of information on health management, have made patients more engaged participants in managing their own health and wellness.

As a result, they demand timely access to their own health information and expect care services that are personalized and convenient. They also want to use consumer-friendly digital tools to engage with their clinical records, lab results, medications and treatment plans.

However, many health organizations are still evolving their approach to meet this challenge. Existing systems of record in healthcare are often siloed, making it difficult to share actionable patient information across the continuum to accelerate service delivery and improve outcomes. The solution lies in implementing next-generation digital health platforms to integrate sources of historical clinical and wellness data to derive insights that drive more engaging patient experiences, better outcomes and lower costs.

Bridging the Information Gap

Integrating data sources across healthcare segments and aggregating them into a single digital-patient record, empowers patients and providers to make better healthcare choices and improve quality of care.

Rather than searching and clicking across multiple systems, an integrated digital patient-care platform creates a “single source of truth” to give patients and their providers quick and easy access to real-time, context-specific information for timely decisions. Benefits include the following:

Patient engagement can also be improved through secure patient messaging capability, the ability for providers to receive patient experience feedback, and deployment of intelligent virtual assistants across a range of mobile devices to create a connected healthcare experience.

Additionally, when healthcare staff have access to the most up-to-date data, they can ensure the right materials are in the right place, reducing material waste and minimizing patient wait times. Furthermore, integrating clinical and wellness systems can help providers efficiently collect population health data to maximize health outcomes through early interventions.

Building a Digital Bridge

These capabilities can be delivered by implementing a core digital platform that enables cross-organizational data sharing and cloud-native technologies such as internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), while ensuring protection of personal data.

Healthcare organizations should also consider solutions that:

In Summary

As 21st century patient care evolves, health organizations will continue being challenged to create engaging patient experiences and enable rapid, actionable insights about individuals at the point of care. These collected insights will also positively impact population health practices. The next step for healthcare organizations is to bring together all the pieces of the digital healthcare ecosystem to move the industry forward. Creating a “single patient view” will lead to innovation and better outcomes for all.


One comment on “Creating a Digital Framework for 21st Century Patient Engagement and Care Coordination”

Living in the digital age, what type of healthcare problems might these innovations present? I see many negative connotations on 5G, which makes me less confident about three and four g. These are the technologies we rely on for convenience. Are any of these negatively affecting our health?

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