Smarter IT in Australian healthcare

The role of IT across Australian healthcare has evolved over the past few years, from merely enabling automation to effecting integration across the healthcare delivery value chain. Data is considered the single most important resource; therefore, healthcare providers are most interested in collating accurate and comprehensive patient information that can help to improve quality of care.

The Australian healthcare IT sector is expected to reach a value of $1.2 billion by the end of 2015, making it the second-largest market in the Asia-Pacific after Japan. Spending on IT, however, is not in proportion with the benefits or improvements experienced across the health system. A high degree of fragmentation is plaguing the industry. Health data and services are not seamlessly connected across regions, facilities or various levels of care, and consumers face challenges such as unwanted repeated diagnostic tests, misdiagnosis, delayed treatment, insufficient long-term care and even medical errors.

Another challenge is the large amount of wastage across healthcare providers. There are grave inefficiencies across hospital inventories, management of devices and consumables, and even staff scheduling. Even processes are reported to be inefficient, with staff spending a sizeable amount of their time on unproductive activities such as searching for devices or manually capturing patient notes.

In meeting these challenges, vendors need to think about the value that their technologies bring not just to a single client but to the healthcare system as a whole. This is where SMART IT comes in.

S - Scalable. Healthcare providers are interested in solutions that enable quick and easy expansion. Systematic deployment of IT across departments, connectivity between disparate systems and rapid expansion of provider facilities all contribute to the need for scalable solutions and are driving the market for cloud in healthcare.

M - Measures-oriented. A key objective of investment is data collection and performance benchmarking. Well-designed analytics solutions that capture vital information to affect process improvement are in demand, creating a need not just for the solutions but also consulting services.

A - Accountable. Quality of healthcare continues to be questioned in spite of a much higher level of data capture for accountability purposes. Australia needs patient-centric data-capturing mechanisms that include indicators of the care quality and customer experience.

R - Real-time. Demand for real-time data at non-conventional sites is increasing fast amongst health professionals. Mobile, smartphone and tablet access to patient data and hospital solutions is the call of the day.

T - Transformational. Expectations from IT systems have risen beyond providing efficiency to transforming the way care is delivered, particularly in remote areas where healthcare access is a challenge. New models of care delivery and payment are expected to be supported by the necessary combination of devices, sensors, software and connectivity platforms.

Natasha Gulati is an Industry Manager with the Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific Healthcare Practice. She focuses on monitoring and analysing emerging trends, technologies and market behaviour in the connected health industry across ASEAN, Australia-New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and works closely with teams in India and China.