The first initiative for the digitization of healthcare came in 2009 with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which incentivized hospitals to begin implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR’s). Even though the industry initially saw a forward progression with the birth of this act, moving to EHRs was merely a first step towards building a foundation for a holistic automation of the healthcare system. With the rise of cloud technologies that cater to the health and life sciences industry, such as Salesforce Health Cloud, healthcare technology is gaining traction while simultaneously receiving resistance from all angles of the industry, whether it be doctors, patients, healthcare providers and others.

It’s Time to Share Data
Due to the many systems that are used in the healthcare industry, interoperability is a major challenge. One of the main strengths of cloud computing is the ability to quickly and seamlessly share data between users and applications. By the year 2020, healthcare data is expected to double every 73 days. To face the challenges of underutilized data in healthcare, we must first realize that sharing healthcare data is vital to the progression of automation and better personalization within the industry. Next, as more and more patients seek this deeply personalized healthcare, the industry must recognize that they have to work together to foster an interoperable relationship, along with an overarching governance to help mitigate the concerns surrounding this movement of digitalization in regards to healthcare.

API Provides Opportunity
Salesforce’s proliferation across industries is largely owed to the ease with which developers can build applications that connect to and build off of a Salesforce cloud. An open application program interface (API) community within the healthcare industry would present a vast opportunity for this kind of digital innovation. Applications built for health tracking and reporting could tie directly into the main database systems of health care providers.

Open APIs would enable cost reduction, increased efficiency, improved doctor-patient relationships, and opportunities to leverage predictive intelligence. When you open up a program’s API it invites the solution of industry challenges with new applications and technologies. A change like this in the healthcare industry would promote healthier lifestyles and create better transparency and communication in the health and life sciences community.

Challenges to Open API’s
The largest challenge that the healthcare industry is currently facing when it comes to utilizing open APIs is a cultural one. Today’s society is very protective of their patients and the patients themselves are cautious of sharing their electronic health records, which is a key component in building an open API community. While these are certainly legitimate concerns across the health and life sciences space, it’s important to look at how rapidly cloud technologies have advanced in order to meet the high security demands of industries like this one.

People are understandably hesitant to share their personal health information. Salesforce carefully customized their Health Cloud to instill trust in patients and encourage integration within the healthcare industry. With the innovations in platform encryption via Salesforce Shield and the upcoming release of bring your own key (BYOK), it is only a matter of time until the world is able to see the amount of potential that such a community could unlock through Salesforce’s Health Cloud.

The Path to Better Patient Care
To succeed, the industry needs to evolve from a focus on medical records management to a focus on patient relationships. Salesforce’s Health Cloud uses the power of the cloud in conjunction with social and mobile technologies to create an environment that enables everyone from admins to patients to access the information they need at any time and on any device. If applications were also able to access and use that data, we would see this connection broaden further into patients and HLS professionals using that data to improve health decisions daily and even predict patients’ needs or preventative care. 

Health and Life Sciences is ripe for disruption by the benefits of an open API community. In this industry, disruption can be life saving. Whether it’s efficiently identifying cures, predicting diseases, connecting doctors, or aligning healthcare providers, shared data could save many lives by making personal healthcare data visible across multiple platforms especially in the event of unexpected emergencies.  In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a large trend towards not only using data and analytics to make decisions, but utilizing them as well.

Hear more about the powerful transformations Salesforce Health Cloud is driving in this Dreamforce session with our client, Silverado. Not attending Dreamforce? You can read about the transformation here.