CIO, Australia: Cognizant’s ANZ Head of Healthcare Explains how IoT and Data Analytics can Improve Australia’s Healthcare System

“Mobile data analysis applications, online information sources, and wearable medical devices are opening new possibilities to create successful healthcare systems in Australia,” writes Alan Fanarof. “By investing in the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected health technology, healthcare providers could be leveraging significant opportunities for more effective business decision-making.” Excerpts:

“For medical device makers, investing in IoT infrastructure and big data analytics capabilities could hold the key to implementing sustainable healthcare processes and systems.

The Australian government and local healthcare institutions need to start recognising the impact technology could have in order to improve the processes and systems commonly overlooked as the root of the problem.

While the cost and resources required to upgrade legacy systems can be exorbitant, an underestimated option is keeping those systems in place and leveraging automation or robotics technologies to eliminate reliance on phone calls, paperwork, and repetitive administrative tasks.

Furthermore, with data management tools commonly hosting different pieces of patient information in different locations, potential efficiencies in patient treatment and management can be easily missed. While simple integration tools could provide some band-aid effects for short-term impact, it’s critical for these organisations to also regularly review their end-to-end processes and assess where they can be streamlined, shortened, or completely automated. This includes the patient’s end-to-end customer experience, the end-to-end treatment process and management of relevant tools and medicines, and the end-to-end health insurance process from registration to payment.

Implementing these changes will not only save on costs and resources, but will also better equip healthcare organisations to serve and appeal to both ‘activated’ and passive consumers.

Despite medical and technological advances, healthcare organisations are still faced with the reality that while active consumers with these technologies can easily self-monitor their health, behavioural changes are not drastically changing.

Large-scale change needs to be driven by hyper-personalised approaches to customer needs. Device manufacturers, for example, could be utilising data from connected devices and other data sources about consumer interactions and transactions in order to identify customers’ likes, dislikes, behaviours and preferences. This can lead to a more in-depth understanding of their products’ weaknesses, and drive customer-centric actions for improvement. In turn, this can result in more effective ways of engaging consumers, patients and businesses, to create measurable changes in our health nationwide.

Also, by using Natural Language Processing and predictive analytics, device manufacturers can foresee issues with the product regarding quality and customer satisfaction, whilst delivering knowledge to use for future product design and customer support.

As well as laying the foundations to capitalise on the technologies available today, healthcare, like every other industry in Australia, also needs to prepare itself for potential digital disruption by upcoming technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.”

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