ERP adoption trends-A Healthy change for Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry is one of the fast growing industries in the world. Some of the major segments of the Industry include:
• Hospital Management Services
• Clinical and Patient Management Services
• Biotechnology, Medical labs and Research
• Medical equipment and supplies
The healthcare industry on the present day faces many challenges. Some of them include: improving patient care, controlling costs, meeting government regulations and effective clinical services.
Key healthcare organization objectives include:
• Better quality of care
• Improved patient outcomes
• Increased productivity and workflow efficiency
• Better information at the point of care
• Improved and integrated communications
• Privacy and protection of patient information
Growth drivers of the Hospital Industry
Even in this technology driven 21st century, health remains a basic need of mankind and ‘healthcare-events’ dominate or at least influence life of most of the people. Here are some of the ‘growth drivers’ of the hospital industry:
• Medical Tourism
• Medical informatics & Telemedicine
• Outsourcing
1. Healthcare services outsourcing
2. Diagnostic services
3. Healthcare business management services
• Increased awareness
• Medical Insurance
• Aging Population
• Growing urbanization
• Low cost treatment
Healthcare Industry - Key Challenges
Key challenges in general:
• Managing complex business structures
• Working with multiple legacy systems
• Rising healthcare costs and low reimbursement rates
• Rapid technology advances in treatment process
• Qualified workforce shortages
• Increasing competition (such as Physician run outpatient surgery centres, specialty hospitals and diagnostic centres)
• Ever stringent government regulations
IT challenges:
• Dependency on multiple small packages and SMEs for day to day operations
• Integration and formal communication among the existing systems are low
• Overall service levels and patient satisfaction levels are low
• Too much dependency on manual processes, paper work resulting in regular and unusual delays in operations
• High cost dependency on independent product vendors adding into increase in maintenance costs
• Too much workload on employees often resulting in non productive work
The future of healthcare lies in critical convergence of the diverse aspects of this industry towards patient-centric care. This trend obviously results in focusing on:
• Personalized ‘patient based’ medicine
• Consumer directed health plans
• The global, patient owned, electronic health records( EHR )
• Disease and preventive management
• Individual pharmaceutical risk and safety management
• Patient empowerment driven relationships
• Web based, online service delivery
Learn how Infosys partnered with a healthcare major for their SAP Upgrade. Click here to register for the webinar.
