How low-code platforms are driving digital transformation in value-based healthcare
The healthcare world has woken up to low-code. Barely a decade and a half old, low-code has come of age over the last few years. Besides healthcare, it is widely used across a wide range of businesses and industries for mission critical, enterprise grade software. The need for value-based care technology and information requirements is growing by the day in the healthcare industry. In their quest to meet this ever growing need, healthcare organisations have their fair share of challenges.
The three main challenges faced by healthcare
The integration of data is one of the most challenging and onerous challenges that the healthcare industry is faced with. To begin with, healthcare data is fragmented over dozens and at times hundreds of applications at most organisations. As per some estimates, larger organisations often manage information between 800–1,000 applications across disparate IT systems. It is an ongoing battle for most healthcare IT executives to customize software solutions, make them work harmoniously with one another and integrate their respective sets. Insurers face substantial pain points regularly with their existing enterprise software.
The rise of consumerism in medicine has been instrumental in pushing many hospital systems to search for novel ways to build brand awareness among their current and prospective patients while at the same time, fulfilling patients demands for convenience, access and efficiency. Hospital authorities have increasingly found that digital transformation initiatives, including patient-facing apps, are a great way to engage patients both within and outside the healthcare landscape. These digital apps have proven versatile and let patients schedule appointments, access medical records, locate the nearest care site or determine whether their symptoms even necessitate a trip to the care site.
The legacy lock-in has been the bane of the healthcare industry. Creation of applications have not matched the speed of the need for them. Implementation, updates and maintenance, along with the lack of mobile offline/native capabilities, have also been slow and are not ideal for health systems that must align with changing markets, strategy and patient needs. On the contrary, a large majority — over 80 percent of executives, made changes to parts of their business operations in order to match the way that their software works!
The low-code solution in healthcare
It has been heartening to note that some healthcare organizations have responded to today’s requirements by implementing low-code development platforms. With these low-code implementations, they have been successful in meeting the app development demands of digital transformation programs while at the same time reducing software maintenance costs, improving data integration and enhancing business agility. The enterprises that have implemented low-code are taking advantage of its flexible, scalable, enterprise solutions to create a single digital platform that easily and seamlessly consolidates and unifies healthcare content and also gives organizations opportunities to very rapidly build new solutions with the technology that they already own.
1. More sophisticated data integration. Data ‘records’ are among the many ways data is handled and this method is used by some platforms to make viewing and storing data from disparate sources more seamless. Data serves no purpose if it is left in silos. However, when a digital platform can help collect and integrate data in an app, it is transformed into actionable intelligence that can improve the health of patients. Low-code allows for efficient and seamless data integration.
2. Reduced ownership costs. There are numerous benefits that low-code has to offer healthcare organisations. Among them is the opportunity to create customised apps that help to improve workflow efficiency and consumer experience. This is achieved with the additional benefit of not having to devote significant time and resources to the development process.
Traditionally, health organizations rely on contracting or hiring developers and programmers to create custom apps — a process that presents several costly downsides. For one, developers are in limited supply and high demand across all industries, not just healthcare. As a result, developers are extremely costly resources to employ. Moreover, the app development lifecycle can take several months, if not years, infringing upon an organization’s ability to innovate and evolve quickly.
3. Emphasize patient and clinician experience. Digital platforms bring with them the ability to help citizen users develop custom, standalone apps and are also an invaluable aid to IT leaders in improving the overall patient experience as well as physician satisfaction. In particular, low-code application platforms play a critical role in developing apps that are closely built to the unique needs and work patterns of clinicians, patients and non-clinical members of healthcare staff. The use of low-code and no-code platforms in the healthcare field allows healthcare organisations to develop a larger number of bespoke consumer and internal facing apps while also saving hugely on the costs that would otherwise be incurred on hiring experienced developers.
With our insightful and incisive approach to developing rapid, affordable and highly effective business solutions through the deployment of low-code solutions, we ensure that clients are able to leverage the disruptive edge of technology while at the same time keeping an eye on their ROI. Reach out to our experts today to see how we can help transform your business.