Top 5 IT Challenges Affecting Healthcare Companies in North America

Are you a business entity in the healthcare sector in the US? You might have witnessed increased competition levels with the introduction of healthcare software and mobile app development services. IoT has made medical devices more interconnected and even interdependent than ever.  The trend expects to gain more traction in the coming years as clients demand higher quality services and reliable care.

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About The Author
Nitin Nijhawan, CDOicon
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Unfortunately, new technologies are also posing risks of security, thefts, and breaches for healthcare institutions. Let’s understand how the current advances in the technology world are bringing both challenges and benefits to the healthcare industry. Also, seeking professional healthcare IT consulting services is the right way to mitigate these challenges and harness the power of advanced technologies.

What Are the IT Services in the Healthcare Industry?

IT has an important role in many aspects of the healthcare industry, from healthcare service delivery to administration and even outcomes of medical procedures. Healthcare IT services can help optimize and even revolutionize systems to facilitate quality and affordable care for patients.

Healthcare IT companies have been supporting healthcare institutions with managed services and IT support services. These include 24/7 software and server monitoring, network management, off-site cloud data hosting and management, help desk support, cloud migration, cloud computing, and more.

Managed healthcare IT services help protect business data in the event of a disaster through automatic backups. The remote storage is encrypted to ensure complete data security and enables you to avoid data loss through virtualized recovery.

Technology Challenges Affecting the Healthcare Industry

  1. Cybersecurity

Cyber attacks and data breaches are the biggest IT challenge in the healthcare sector and for healthcare IT consultants. US hospitals and medical institutions are usually an easy and rich target by cybercriminals. The main reason is that their systems are decentralized, and they contain large amounts of sensitive data related to patient care and operations. Recurring incidents of data breaches increases the risk of mistrust among patients and service providers.

  1. Data and Incorporated Health Services

Healthcare organizations generate a massive amount of data in daily operations using AI-powered software applications. The information includes important medical data such as patients’ medical records, clinical notes, and transcripts, and connected device data. However, the lack of a proper data management architecture makes the information collected vulnerable to breach attacks.

Transitioning from a relational database to a cloud-based non-relational database can be a potential solution to managing large amounts of data safely and efficiently. The cloud will allow institutions to scale up and down and include more applications as their data management needs evolve.

  1. Cost Crisis

Cost crisis is currently a major challenge for the healthcare industry. The rising healthcare costs are discouraging as the financial burden of advanced healthcare is too heavy to bear for patients. CT scans, lab tests, and even follow-up visits are costing a lot of money. A number of factors contribute to this, like drug manufacturing cost, insurance, administrative cost, and more.

There is a need for tapping into Information technology for optimizing and digitizing current operations and adopting mobile healthcare solutions, which will result in reduced treatment costs.

  1. Hospital Security

Most hospitals and related organizations provide services round the clock. For this reason, instituting strict security systems and measures is a must to ensure safe access to the facility by staff, service providers, and patients. Restricted areas must only be accessible to authorized personnel. 

However, criminals are also making use of the latest technologies to gain entry to restricted areas. Increasing incidents of thefts related to drugs, medical equipment, and assets and incidences of violence are relevant cases in point. These cases can be used to inspire IT innovations that strengthen security for entities in the healthcare sector.

  1. Non-Compliance with Regulatory Standards

The involvement of IT in the healthcare industry is remarkably diverse. This creates a risk of non-compliance with established regulatory standards. For instance, routine operations can suffer disruptions because of using healthcare Analytics app development services. This can also jeopardize employees’ and patients’ safety, attract fines, and compromise the quality of healthcare. 

With a better understanding of rules governing healthcare organizations, it is possible to build better IT solutions that benefit everyone.

Healthcare IT Consulting Services: Opportunities & ROI Benefits

Healthcare IT consulting services present diverse opportunities to significantly improve the delivery of healthcare services in the US. Many solutions have emerged that focus on digitizing healthcare procedures and modernizing existing systems and software. They also involve providing technology consulting and migration services as well as emerging technological solutions, like payment gateway integration and mobile healthcare solutions. 

Healthcare IT consultants draw on their technical expertise to help your organization grow by adopting smart technologies. Receiving good quality IT services from a healthcare IT company will not only increase your opportunities to improve your business but also offer greater returns on your investment. Many hospitals and institutes use IT where it merged isolated applications such as appointment scheduling, lab reporting, and payment and invoicing. 

The ROI benefits related to healthcare IT show dramatic cost savings from reduced staffing and resource requirements. For example, automated data management applications are eliminating the need for data entry personnel. The speech recognition technology is also saving institutions time and money spent on manual transcription. IT solutions also include smart appointment scheduling systems that result in an efficient flow from procedure completion to reporting and payment. Healthcare IT companies are also offering IT systems that help achieve scale efficiency and improve throughputs.

Conclusion

The current situation for healthcare institutions is that of “one step forward, two steps back” with several major IT challenges. However, it is important for them to timely recognize and tap into the opportunities to adopt technological advances. A step in the direction is by onboarding a healthcare IT company that can solve problems, design targeted solutions, and ensure prompt implementation and ongoing maintenance. 

At VLink, we have considerable experience in developing healthcare IT solutions for all types and sizes of businesses or organizations. We develop scalable, secure, and most importantly stable solutions that follow regulatory standards and help resolve pressing technological roadblocks. Our customized solutions offer unmatched value to hospitals, assisted living facilities, clinics, laboratories, and any entity in the healthcare sector.

Contact us to design value-based solutions that are easy to use for your staff, service providers, and your patients.

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