The Summer ‘24 release preview is out and will be generally available by mid-June! The latest release from Salesforce brings critical feature improvements for our friends in the Healthcare & Life Sciences (HLS) industry.  Of course, the hot topic in Tech over the last year has been Artificial Intelligence (AI). As Salesforce continues to beef up its AI offerings, the HLS industry using Health Cloud will reap the benefits of new and improved generative AI features that make a substantial difference in your day-to-day operations. AI and other critical improvements in the Summer ’24 release will save your organization time and money, and, most importantly, drive tangible improvements in the quality of care you can provide your patients.

What is Salesforce Health Cloud?

“Built on the world’s #1 AI CRM, Health Cloud is the trusted, connected platform for healthcare. By bringing together clinical and nonclinical data in one place with actionable intelligence, Health Cloud helps you collaborate efficiently, deliver personalized care, and automate health operations.”

With that, let’s dive into the goodies coming soon to a Salesforce org near you!

AI, Engines, and Understanding your Data

• Generative AI for Assessments allows you to streamline the process of analyzing and creating relevant questions from detailed forms and documents.  Pulling critical information from historical patient records with the click of a button turns a labor-intensive and costly process into a quick and easy task. It produces comprehensive screening questions that directly impact the quality of care.
• The Improved Business Rules Engine will help you save time by reducing the administrative clicks required to add or update business logic.  This allows you to pivot quicker and enable critical business process changes faster and with less overhead.
• As your practice grows, so does your data!  The improved Data Processing Engine grows with you and allows for massive amounts of data to be processed efficiently.  This translates directly to improved speed of service for your employees and patients.
• Segmentation insights on the new Patient Segmentation dashboard enables you to optimize, and be strategic about, your resource allocation by understanding and identifying high-risk patients.

Other Important Updates

• Intelligent Appointment Management can better handle complex multi-step scheduling processes, allowing you to create a series of related appointments at once and easily handles re-scheduling based on Provider or Patient needs.
• Criteria-Based Search & Filter on Experience Sites combined with dynamic layout result cards for easy scanning of important details makes locating a provider easier than ever!
• A new integration with Milliman Care Guidelines (MCG) provides access to industry-standard care guidelines that enable you to make informed decisions, easily administer MCG-based assessments to create personalized care plans, and even take advantage of suggestions based on MCG guidelines.

As always, this is just the tip of the iceberg for what Salesforce Health Cloud can do for your organization, and with 3 releases each year they are always innovating and improving!  Access the full set of release notes here.

At Perficient, our Salesforce practice is completely focused on you and empowering your organization to take advantage of these tools. So if you are looking for an advantage to drive operational efficiency, improve patient outcomes, and ultimately deliver higher-quality care, consider Salesforce Health Cloud with Strategy and Implementation provided by the experts at Perficient!

Perficient + Salesforce 

As a leading Salesforce consulting partner, we are on a mission to harness the power of Salesforce to solve complex business problems. With specialized knowledge in Data Cloud, Einstein AI, Marketing Cloud, and Experience Cloud, our team is dedicated to crafting innovative digital experiences that drive client success.

We aren’t just experts; we’re storytellers who understand the unique needs and challenges in the manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and life sciences, and financial services industries. We team up with our industry and solution experts to build complex enterprise ecosystems for our clients, and through our commitment to building authentic relationships with clients and partners, we foster collaboration and trust that lead to sustainable growth.

At the heart of our mission is our belief in lifting up people and communities. By leveraging our global team’s skills and resources, we strive to solve complex business problems and leave a meaningful impact on society.

Join us in our journey to revolutionize the way businesses connect, engage, and thrive in the digital era. Get connected with our experts to learn more.

Wild tribes join with age-old enemies to fight the night king and his zombie legions. Nomadic hordes swarm across the sea with their dragon queen to enter the fray. Kings in the North set aside family squabbles to defend their fortress in a moment of peril. Is this a model for healthcare transformation through digital technology?

There are messages in George R.R. Martin’s dramatic series to help every aspiring healthcare professional – whether it’s snuffing out ice dragons or battling business tribalism in the digital age.

When forced to choose between Game of Thrones or studying healthcare industry trends, many people might reach for the TV remote. But even if you managed to avoid the pre-pandemic “Thrones” trend, you may still have encountered the following themes:

1. Blended teams of expertise win the day – inspired by a unified purpose against a common enemy.
2. Digital technology is more than a tool – it is a fundamental environmental shift that is “upon us”. And healthcare, like every other business sector, must adapt to survive.

This may sound like common sense, but sadly, in my experience with the blended world where healthcare meets digital technology, I have witnessed my fair share of business divisions acting alone, setting their own goals and strategies in silos, fighting each other for recognition, and launching new technology solutions without a common organizational approach.

A Two-Headed Dragon

The two topics introduced above may seem to be separate, weighty, and worthy of their own individual discussion:

• Organizational Silos in the Workplace
• Digital Transformation in Healthcare

But upon reflection, some key themes that combine the two are worth consideration.

Silos to Systems

Let’s address the first organizational barrier to healthcare reform – the business silo.

Isolationist fears have a long history in the age of kings and countries, both real and imagined. So, it is no surprise that we bring this sensibility to the world of business.

The team approach also has roots going back to the dawn of early man. We are not the fastest, strongest, or most resilient of animals on the planet – but one thing that propelled us to the top of the food chain is our ability to work collaboratively, drawing on individual talents while maintaining a unified vision and common sense of purpose.

And in healthcare reform, most of us can easily recognize and have witnessed countless examples of ways that the silo mentality has obstructed progress. We’ve watched episodic “illness-care” defeat holistic “well-care”. We’ve struggled with inefficiencies in electronic health record (EMR) delivery that stifle caregiver collaboration, and lack of awareness of the patient’s experience as viewed through the totality of their medical journey.

But there is hope – many healthcare systems have taken steps toward building momentum, even coining a phrase that has gained traction: The Quintuple Aim Movement.

The Five Aims Include:

1. Improving the patient experience
2. Delivering better patient outcomes
3. Improving the provider experience
4. Advancing health equity
5. Reducing the per-capita cost of care

The aims draw on cross-functional skills and talents to achieve a common purpose. Think of it as an extreme team approach. And the potential benefits are undeniable. They help direct caregivers and administrators alike to embrace the following, relatively recent approaches to healthcare:

• Holistic care and recognition of the patient’s full “ecosystem” of mind, body and spirit
• Well-care management across the continuum of the patient’s journey in treatment (and in life)
• Collaborative care communication between all the patient’s caregivers (family members, providers, facility staff, etc.)

Redefining Business Strategy through Digital Collaboration

With this approach, we can now deploy a new, but not-so-secret weapon – the digital workplace. In fact it’s happening already, and healthcare must keep pace.

Digital technology has permanently changed the ways people connect, collaborate and communicate.

We find ourselves in a world where healthcare consumers have three accelerating demands:

1. The need to capture and share knowledge – Patients are putting an increasing amount of pressure on digital systems designed to allow medical professionals to transmit and collaborate on patient care. They want access to their medical records at home, and expect that everyone associated with their care will be appropriately “up to speed”.
2. The need to manage information – The sheer volume of information sources creates its own issues of curation, and healthcare professionals have a role to play as “gatekeepers” when the patient opens their own online floodgate of sound health advise combined with misinformation.
3. The need for speed – Patients are becoming increasingly impatient with delays in knowledge transfer, and rightfully so. The healthcare industry must recognize that the patient/consumer can reference a myriad of resources on their smartphones, even while in a hospital room awaiting surgery.

Digital Strategy to the Rescue

So all we need to change is everything – right?

It might not be that daunting. Looking at interviews with executives conducted by the MIT Center for Digital Business and Consulting, some transformational ideas rise to the top:

Transforming operation processes – Digital leaders put a premium on internal collaboration, creating processes and teams that thrive handling varying functions, and develop incentives for sharing knowledge.

Transforming business models – Digital leaders rely on strong executive leadership to clear barriers for team, division, and departmental interaction. Indeed the word “division” itself in many business models could use a refresh to help shift this mentality.

Transforming customer/patient experiences – Business leaders in healthcare are seeing decision-makers place “improving patient experience” at the top of strategic initiatives. Digital technology finds itself right at home in this endeavor by enabling:

1. The use of analytics to adjust messaging based on consumer behavior
2. The use of digital resources to predict desired outcomes and shorten the patient’s path to useful healthcare information
3. The use of digital technology at the bedside or in the clinic exam room allows a provider to instantly access a wide array of topical information and resources in one-on-one discussions with patients

The Promise of Technology

Many healthcare companies investing in digital solutions are drawn in by the promise of greater collaboration and effective communication as a path toward driving revenue, scaling resources and attracting top talent. Unfortunately, I’ve seen several companies preemptively pursue digital initiatives without changing underlying, business-as-usual, practices and processes.

Business strategists across every industry often equate the term “digital transformation” with a shift in technology investment.

Recent research shows that while 88% of companies report digital transformation programs, only 25% have a clear understanding of what that means.

Dungeons and Dragons and the Program Approach

My mission as a digital consultant has become one of advocating and embracing the fundamental changes needed to help healthcare teams work together through digital technology, accelerating knowledge transfer to benefit patients and families.

And, as referenced earlier, my weapon of choice is the program approach, one that echoes and leverages key business practices exhibited by successful companies in and out of the healthcare space. It includes a recognition that collaborative processes lead to greater efficiencies, important insights, and inspired solutions.

This also supports the notion of drawing on in-house talent even if they report to multiple managers across various disciplines and corporate divisions. It allows for flexibility and agility (hence the common use of the term “agile” in project management circles). And it rewards team achievement over individual “one-upmanship”.

If siloed thinking and unproductive digital solutions are threatening your healthcare organization, start by reaching out to leaders in varying teams and departments to share knowledge and experience.

Becoming truly collaborative through digital technology will take time and resources, but there are many examples where similar dragons have been slayed by perseverance and persistence.

Think of it as a quest to lead your organization into the new frontier while staying true to your healthcare mission, vision, and values.

I work in an industry with contradicting messages around the term failure.

On one hand we hear to fail fast, be innovative, try different things, and “don’t let perfection be a roadblock to progress.” On the other hand – and especially when it comes to performance reviews, – nobody wants to have to justify that “hiccup” when delivery doesn’t match expectations.

If given the choice, most career-minded professionals in the healthcare information technology (HIT) sphere would prefer working in teams that bat a thousand. So how are we to learn when things don’t go as hoped?

Learning From Mistakes

Preferably, we learn from other people’s mistakes. Reviewing case scenarios in retrospect presents an ideal chance to identify missed opportunities, gaps in communication, and failures in following fundamental guidelines. These are all good standards in professional practice.

But honestly, when you make a mistake (and trust me – it happens to everyone), the stakes feel higher. Even the most compelling retrospective and disaster analysis rarely delivers the same impact as the first-hand feeling of disappointing a customer face-to-face, having to account for errors in judgement, or simply owning up to misses in delivery regardless of the excuse or justification.

The good news is that a lot can be gained by capitalizing on moments like this.

Sometimes it can be difficult, especially if the situation is emotionally charged, to connect to a more reflective or career-focused growth mindset. But the benefits can be surprising, and worth making that extra effort to try and look at the situation as honestly and objectively as possible.

The Challenge is Clarity

It’s important to move past the highly-personal connection to a mistake – and, as a team and individually, to embrace these teachable moments. The gravitas can help.

But the challenge is clarity. How can we use the power of a recent experience – one that stirs up emotions, or an activated fight or flight instinct – to motivate course correction, without leaning into the natural tendency for self-defense that leads to blaming others or looking for that malicious “gotcha” from external persons or institutions?

Takeaways from Experience

Here are a few takeaways I learned from discussing this with HIT professionals that have “been there, done that:”

Tip 1: Embrace your feelings.

Emotions can be powerful. Sometimes they cloud judgment, but their energy and force needs to be appreciated. Don’t attempt to suppress or deny feelings that arise from facing missteps or negative outcomes. Rather, acknowledge them.

Allow yourself the space to feel your feelings.

There is no need for critical analysis on this tip – just grant yourself permission to experience your basic human instincts. For some people, capturing your thoughts and feelings in writing can create space for acceptance, recognition and clarity.

Tip 2: Take a breath.

Time can work wonders.

Sometimes, the simple perspective of a new day can spark fresh intuition and perception.

Look for ways to replace the noise of reliving the situation over and over in your head with something that is positive and attention-absorbing. Go to a movie, help a friend with something completely unrelated. Step outside for a moment – both literally (if possible) and mentally.

Additionally, consider taking stock with a self-retrospective during this step and use that for measured action. Ask yourself three simple questions,

1. What is working / going well?
2. What is not going well?
3. What can I do differently?

Tip 3: Take measured action.

Oftentimes, immediate action is required to provide a situation assessment or report so managers and leaders can understand the situation and take appropriate action. Providing an analysis in the short term can help to avoid misremembering or leaving out critical details. But take care in these moments as well – make sure to hit your own personal “pause” button before hitting “send” to the wider world.

Take the measured action to carefully review your assessments and re-read for words that sound like blame or judgement.

Tip 4: Follow the plan.

In nearly every HIT environment, there is an appropriate, safe, and well-situated contingency plan for just about every scenario. And there’s typically a fairly detailed plan for damage control and amelioration, too.

Familiarize yourself with the protocols for situations that most closely match yours.

Tip 5: Recognize tendencies toward isolation or being “uniquely oppressed.”

Finally, and maybe most importantly, try and share your experience with trusted colleagues and managers. In most cases you’ll find a surprising amount of empathy and stories of similar predicaments.

Opening yourself to hearing about other experiences can help bring clarity and insight. This is critical.

Reach out to team members, peers, other leaders for help and guidance when feeling stressed or unsure of what to do next. Failing fast on an island is the worst, but you don’t have to go it alone.

A feeling of embarrassment, or the tendency to try and “look good” in every situation can lead folks to downplay or even hide from experiences that may seem like they won’t reflect well on your character or your professional brand. But once you get over that trepidation, and share what you’re going through with trusted friends and advisers, you’re quite likely to find camaraderie, compassion and good ideas from colleagues who have been in the same boat.

Blessing in Disguise

Moments like this can also be a bit of a test as to whether you’re in a professional environment that is truly interested in your career growth and job satisfaction. In the right environment, supportive managers, team members and HR partners will help guide you on the path to reconciliation without judgment or recrimination. Supportive and savvy organizations have learned that it is in everyone’s best interest to provide a safe space to share and surface issues early, and to take corrective action not just for the benefit of the customer, but for the benefit of the delivery team members as well.

It may be difficult sometimes to hear folks tell you to “dust yourself off” and “get back on that horse”, but the message is more than just learning to bounce back after hitting bumps in the road. Setbacks and difficulty can often provide some of the most informative and beneficial experiences in a HIT professional’s career. Look for that “blessing in disguise” whenever possible, take the next right action, and you may be surprised how quickly you’ll feel ready to get back in the game.

Diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility are key to significant future growth in healthcare technology. Developing new digital tools, as well as integrating them into the digital health ecosystem, can lead to significant improvements in healthcare delivery. Good health shouldn’t have to wait and accessibility should not have to be up to the beneficiaries — the health IT industry can, and should, step up to the plate.

We have already achieved a sufficient level of technological advancements to be able to tackle accessibility in healthcare technology development. The next big leap in our industry may very well depend on whether we prioritize digital accessibility and digital equality within our process, in order to deliver built-in enhanced usability and functionality for all users.

With Greater Inclusion Comes Greater Reach

The World Report on Disability, published by the World Health Organization in 2011, found that roughly 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability — this significantly exceeded previous estimates, which suggested a prevalence of around 10%. It is worth noting, however, that the 15% reported at that time was likely an undercounted assessment, as researchers often faced the problem of encountering limited data sets, which were compiled according to indices that varied considerably across borders and cultures.

An example of good practices unto itself, the report took four years to put together and was a collaboration of more than 350 researchers around the world, many of them disabled. Refining and homogenizing methodologies is one step in the right direction — inclusive assessments that remain considerate of the fluidity of the disability concept make for a clearer picture and result in fewer groups and people being left behind in our rush for progress.

Keep Accessibility Top-Of-Mind

Today’s technology and innovation harbor great potential to enhance the capabilities of our healthcare ecosystem, but it is necessary to adjust our methods in order to achieve it. The first practical step in tackling accessibility in healthcare technology development is to acknowledge the disabilities that are challenged by insufficiently accessible technology.

Before we embark on inclusive healthtech design, let’s make sure we understand technological disability correctly. A person’s inability to use digital health services may be on account of specific chronic health issues such as mobility disabilities or vision, hearing, and speech impairments. Often, however, access is challenging for individuals suffering from temporary impairment disabilities, such as recovering from injury or surgery, as well as for older adults and caregivers who are not well versed in the interfaces so many of us take for granted — not only do such cases make up a significant percentage of the population, but they need regular health care access and efficient monitoring.

Focusing the user experience (UX) on inclusive accessibility instead of general (able) accessibility will likely increase the overall quality of the user experience for all beneficiaries. Moreover, it would raise the level of satisfaction regarding the healthcare experience as a whole, which ultimately consolidates a good reputation for vendors.

Improve Interoperability to Reduce Redundancy

Being able to seamlessly navigate all interactions within the healthcare environment can make a significant difference in a patient’s journey. UX design is not generally considered to be a life-or-death component of technology development. But in healthcare, it can be.

Our industry evolves and expands at an ever-faster pace, churning out new health IT and apps at breakneck speed. The resulting variety of operating systems creates barriers in data sharing and accessibility, which weighs down healthcare delivery with a myriad of unnecessary redundancies. Timely diagnosis and care issues can stem from situations in which providers do not have complete information or they face delays in accessing necessary data on account of issues as small as scan file type incompatibility.

Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) grants individuals the right to access their own health data, the process remains largely burdensome and lengthy for patients. Conversely, having to supply health information separately for every different provider makes the interaction inefficient for both patient and provider.

Tap Into Relevant Lived Experience Throughout Development

This should go without saying, but it is essential to include diverse individuals with various disabilities into your development process, from digital design to testing. There is no better way to ensure that your medical software solutions integrate enough assistive technology and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices.

Record detailed user experience feedback in order to identify any barriers to understanding and navigating the product. Take into account all levels of digital health literacy and provide adequate support and instruction throughout the patient’s experience.

Be a Digital Changemaker

Industry, governments, and end-users all have constructive value in the process of increasing accessibility, whether it’s by raising awareness of need, adopting relevant legislation and regulations, developing new standards, collaborating for universal design wherever possible, or offering training and support.

Expanding health into the digital medium is a valuable opportunity to make it more than just transforming a current state of affairs to a digital format — we can contribute to a reimagining of the patients’ journey into one that incorporates more efficiency and accessibility, and that is intentional about expanding delivery of care to more patients in need.

Software Solutions to Streamline Your Healthcare Business

Digitalization future-proofs your healthcare business and sets it up for long-term success. Perficient can help you find the most fitting solutions for your stability and growth.

This is the second post in our blog series about Healthcare Interoperability with MuleSoft. Click here to read the first installment. 

As we’ve introduced in the previous blog, interoperability in healthcare plays a critical role in exchanging health information seamlessly and securely. With regulations like the CMS Final Rule, data such as the below can be made available and shareable: 

• Patient Record API 
• Provider Directory API 
• Payor to Payor Transfer 
• Notification of discharge and other events 
• BlueButton 

Adding a FHIR API on top of your Electronic Health Record (EHR) system connects disparate data across systems to standardize patient data and create accessibility to payers, providers, and patients. Patients with providers in different healthcare systems can access information via a single portal. This portal integrates data from different formats and delivers a comprehensive view of the patient (including allergies, care plans, health issues, and medications). 

The MuleSoft Accelerator for Healthcare  

Beginning your healthcare interoperability journey with an enterprise tool allows you to address challenges once, rather than relying on a rapid fix to meet requirements. This helps relieve additional costs down the road, as non-interoperability integrations are typically not handled by niche vendors. An enterprise tool like MuleSoft enables you to reduce costs by addressing challenges all at once, rather than relying on rapid individual solutions to meet requirements.  

MuleSoft is recognized as a leading solution for API management and enterprise integrations. MuleSoft supports enterprise-scale healthcare interoperability plus healthcare standards like HL7, FHIR, DICOM, and others, to power single-platform solutions that transform clinical and non-clinical delivery. The MuleSoft Accelerator for Healthcare enables healthcare organizations to address interoperability concerns, including regulations such as CMS Final Rule and helps to build larger digital transformation initiatives like Patient 360. The accelerator includes pre-built APIs, connectors, integration templates, and a prescriptive end-to-end architecture. The solution also provides a library of USCID and FHIR R4 resources. 

By leveraging the MuleSoft Accelerator for Healthcare, customers don’t need to reinvent the interoperability wheel. The pre-packaged architecture and API templates jumpstart customers on their interoperability journey. A customer can have their platform up and running with their first API built in as soon as in 2-4 weeks. 

MuleSoft not only provides the platform and accelerator, but brings its entire API ecosystem to the customer, which includes standards and best practices, developer frameworks and templates, and governance like a Center for Enablement (C4E), thus setting organizations up for long-term success. 

Perficient + MuleSoft 

At Perficient, we excel in tactical MuleSoft implementations by helping you address the full spectrum of challenges with lasting solutions, rather than relying on band-aid fixes. The end result is an intelligent multifunction resource that reduces costs over time and equips your organization to proactively prepare for future integration demands.

We’re a Premier MuleSoft partner offering integration expertise that’s strengthened by our extensive healthcare know-how, particularly when it comes to safely using, transporting, and securing healthcare data.

Ready to achieve interoperability? Download our interactive guide!

Download our guide, An API-Led Approach to Interoperability in Healthcare With MuleSoft

Blockchain technology has gained immense popularity and buzz ever since its introduction to the tech world, especially for the advancements it brought to the financial sector. Payments, exchanges, and data management have been revolutionized thanks to blockchain, which ultimately led to more innovation across multiple businesses and industries, including healthcare. But how does this technology actually work?  

What is Blockchain?

At its core, blockchain is a decentralized system that consists of linked blocks of data chained together by digital cryptographic signatures. Each one of these is called a ‘hash’ and is stored in shared digital ledgers, which are supported by nodes. These nodes are a network of connected processes that maintain a safe copy of the entire chain. Nodes are continuously updated and kept in sync. 

Users can access the chain of information shared on a distributed network of systems, but to make changes to the data, all the participants in that particular chain system have to agree to those changes. This makes blockchain impenetrable to hackers or essentially anyone who wants to try to manipulate the data, as changes to the blocks can only be made through a consensus.  

Check out the diagram, courtesy of Infinity Economics, to better understand the entire process. 

How Does Blockchain Work in the Healthcare Industry? 

Just as with other industries, blockchain is also altering and restructuring the healthcare sector with various tweaks and changes. For instance, blockchain connects various systems and databases, which generate key insights that lead to better care and diagnosis for patients. Blockchain has the potential to alter the entire medical system by placing patients at the center of its entire ecosystem. 

The digital ledger also can fortify and increase privacy, security, as well as interoperability of big health data, all while providing a new model when it comes to health information exchange (HIE) by making digital medical records more efficient. According to a Global Market Insights report, blockchain technology in the healthcare market was valued at over $48.1 million in 2018 and is expected to see a 65% increase by 2025. 

One of the biggest advantages of blockchain in healthcare is the complete absence of a central administrator. This automatically eliminates the costs and hassle of intermediaries, unlocking the full potential of interoperability.  

The healthcare industry is all about having unlimited access to patient data while keeping the information secure and confidential, that’s why blockchain is the perfect technology for this sector. Easy access, data confidentiality, scalability, and security—all wrapped in a future-proof technology. 

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Blockchain Tech 

Even though blockchain is still considered a disruptive technology, its benefits are far-reaching. Below is a list of the top 5 ways blockchain is transforming the healthcare industry, and why you should consider investing in this future-ready technology.

1. Easy Access to Health Data and Patient Records 

By leveraging this decentralized system, access to patient data, laboratory results, disease records, and treatments becomes easier and more accessible. This feature benefits both doctors and patients, as all participants can store data in the cloud for others to access, analyze, and modify. Using this system will also prevent any chance of data loss while creating a permanent medical history for patients. Additionally, physicians will have the ability to access a patient’s real-time health status, if the patient uses wearables, for example. 

2. Interoperability and Smooth Health Data Exchange 

Although sometimes a complex process, data transfer has to be fast. Blockchain not only allows easy access to health data, it speeds up data transfer and exchanges due to how the entire ledger system is set up. Precision and coordination are key in the healthcare industry, so having access to critical information is everything. Interoperability is not only limited to information exchange, it’s also about the trust among users involved in the data flow and making sure everything is happening in a secure environment. 

3. Top-Of-The-Line Cybersecurity 

We’ve already established that blockchain provides heightened security thanks to the nature of its technology. Blockchain’s cryptography capabilities ensure that data is kept secure and safe, impenetrable by outside parties, and it doesn’t even allow its own users to tamper with the data unnoticed by the other members of the chain. Healthcare data, patient privacy, and digital medical devices have to be kept safe at all times, and the increasing number of cyber attacks makes blockchain the most reliable technology against digital breaches.  

4. Better Supply Chain Management 

The last thing any medical clinic, facility, or hospital wants is to mix up their drug delivery, not have supplies delivered in time, or not have supplies delivered at all. There’s always confusion around logistics, and the bigger and more frequent the transports, errors are bound to happen. A decentralized system also eliminates issues like unauthorized access, data loss, or accidental deletion. Luckily, blockchain can provide a streamlined delivery experience for everyone, as both medical and logistics personnel can have access to the same supply chain where they can communicate. This automatically prevents mistakes and confusion around orders and transport.

5. Safe Payments 

Blockchain started as an ecosystem for safe payments, especially payments that involve cryptocurrency, but the technology has evolved so much since then. Nonetheless, safe payments are still a core feature of this technology. Blockchain can facilitate fast and secure payments through its encrypted ledgers, which also provide real-time verification. And the best part? No intermediaries, aka banks. 

Conclusion 

Similar to how cloud computing technology led to innovative healthcare cloud computing solutions being developed, blockchain technology will undoubtedly lead to numerous applications in the medical sector.

The advantages of blockchain technology are far-reaching. From easy access to health data, all the way to cutting-edge cyber security features and safe payment methods, this future-proof system is brimming with benefits. Its nature is still disruptive, especially for those who do not fully understand it just yet, however, once you have a clear grasp on what blockchain actually does and how it functions, you’ll have zero doubts about whether it’s a good investment integrating it in your healthcare business. 

The patient is at the center of the 21st Century Cures Act. The interoperability provisions grant patients more power over their care and access to key information.

Interoperability, a popular term in the healthcare industry, is the ability to exchange electronic health information seamlessly and securely without significant effort from the user. It allows for payers, providers, and patients across organizational, regional, and national boundaries to have complete access, exchange, and use of all authorized information, and removes concerns of information blocking.

To continue to promote interoperable health information and data sharing, both the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have issued new rules that mandate an application programming interface (API)-led approach to interoperability in healthcare.

The ONC Cures Act Final Rule and the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule work together to enforce the interoperability and information blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act for the seamless exchange of patient, member, and physician electronic health records (EHR) across payers, providers, and third-party smartphone applications for patient use.

What does it mean for me?

For Patients:

• Obtain Secure Access to Health Records: Acquire a secure patient access to electronic health records and easily obtain control of personal care and medical records through smartphones and authorized modern software applications.
• Shop for Care and Manage Costs: Gain transparency with expanded choices for patients and payers in healthcare with insights delivered about care quality and costs to assist in making health and financial decisions.

For Hospitals and Clinicians:

• Efficient and Inexpensive Patient Data Requests: Easily provide patients with access to their information in a fully automated, cost-effective manner. With secure, standardized APIs, patients will be able to access their health information from an app of their choice without special effort on the part of the hospitals or clinicians.
• Provide a Choice of Applications: Leverage open APIs with secure access to data for applications. A growing, innovative application marketplace and the final rules will help ensure certified APIs are made available in a way that is safe, secure, and affordable.
• Maintain Information Blocking with Common Sense Exceptions: Benefit from information blocking provisions with defined practices that are considered reasonable and necessary activities that would not constitute information blocking. The Final Rules establishes exceptions to allow hospitals and clinicians common sense operational flexibility. This includes protecting patient privacy and security as well as handling situations where moving data is technically infeasible.
• Put the Patient’s Safety First: Balance the patient and clinician needs and encourage transparency around patient safety issues within health IT, while also attempting to protect the intellectual property rights of health IT developers who have made large investments in building user interfaces and workflows.

Concerned about the complexity of making interoperability a reality?

By leveraging the MuleSoft Accelerator for Healthcare, we can help you make patient data accessible by digitally transforming how your organization delivers EHR in a way that meets the new mandates and puts control back into the consumers hands. Our strategy and consulting expertise will ensure healthcare payers and providers successfully follow these new rules while delivering powerful, secure, and scalable capabilities – and when implemented effectively, health information exchange (interoperability) can also reduce the burden of certain administrative processes, such as prior authorization.

At Perficient, we excel in tactical MuleSoft implementations by helping you address the full spectrum of challenges with lasting solutions, rather than relying on band-aid fixes. The end result is an intelligent multifunction resource that reduces costs over time and equips your organization to proactively prepare for future integration demands.

We’re a Premier MuleSoft partner offering integration expertise that’s strengthened by our extensive healthcare know-how, particularly when it comes to safely using, transporting, and securing healthcare data.

Ready to achieve interoperability? Download our interactive guide!

Download our guide, An API-Led Approach to Interoperability in Healthcare With MuleSoft

For the past year, major health care providers and research centers have been focused on one goal – minimizing the negative effects of the pandemic. One of these providers, Moderna, has been a front runner in the research, development, and dissemination of a successful COVID-19 vaccine. Due to their increased efforts and high demands, they have quickly added additional employees to their repertoire (almost 250 new employees in just the past 12 months). Handling this growth alone is an enormous challenge, but to do so in tandem with industry pressures, they needed help.

Boomi, a Perficient partner, has been able to help companies like Moderna with these new challenges. Through their cloud services, integration, migration, and automation capabilities, Boomi has seen exceptional success and assists organizations in business continuity and connectedness.

Perficient partners with Boomi for Health Care, Financial services, and Retail engagements. This deployment was solely executed by Boomi and is just one great example of its capabilities.

Acceleration & Scale

Cloud processes give Moderna a variety of advantages (accelerated learning, automation, scalability, etc.). Still, to harness the full capabilities of cloud, they needed complete integration of on-demand applications and data from multiple SaaS vendors.

Additionally, Moderna wanted to ensure that users had the correct access and authorization across several applications, which could not be solved exclusively with integration.

By employing its native-cloud integration platform, Boomi helped Moderna scale efficiently by enabling system integration and automation across budgeting, vendor payments, and HR management. More than a dozen integrations were implemented across the Moderna IT infrastructure, making it possible for a single discrete system to flow across several SaaS vendors while ensuring data accuracy.

Not only did this integration lead to cost savings across several departments and Moderna as a whole, but it also allowed for:

1. Complex, cross-platform automation
2. Streamlined migration
3. Accelerated onboarding
4. Consistency and accuracy with permission management
5. Reduced IT efforts

Automation

In 2017 Moderna introduced ServiceNow, a software aimed at ensuring the company was meeting compliance for incident and change management. There was so much success that IT leaders opted to utilize the program for additional functions, such as onboarding new employees and service providers.

With this came the challenge of integration and migration of multiple systems.

By utilizing their Master Data Hub implementation by Boomi, Moderna can run 25 processes across 15 points of integration for onboarding and provisioning. This is in addition to the 250 Boomi processes that are already in place across the Modern organization.

These processes, and the Hub as a whole, ensure that data is correctly and consistently transferred across ServiceNow and Workday while making it easy to identify discrepancies for exception management.

With these integrations, Moderna has doubled its speed of development compared to alternative vendors allowing the company to onboard 600+ service providers a year.

The integration of Boomi’s Master Data Hub has been integral during the pandemic for Moderna. With Boomi and ServiceNow, Moderna has been able to:

1. Eliminate hundreds of hours in manual onboarding tasks
2. Boost employee satisfaction and retention
3. Curtailed risks by ensuring accurate reporting of data

Learn More

Perficient is dedicated to connecting providers and partners. In partnership with Boomi, we can support companies through these difficult times to ensure they are not only equipped for future success but have the necessary adaptability within their infrastructure to maintain consistency and accuracy.

We understand the value that data consolidation, migration, and automation means for your organization. Learn more about Boomi’s offering and what it could mean for your company!

Health plan organizations must conquer mountains of data, increasing regulations, and escalating consumer expectations. The digital interactions happening beyond your industry shape customers’ expectations. 

That’s why your digital presence matters, so you can offer services to meet their needs wherever they are. 

Common Risks and Consequences for Health Plans Not Embracing Digital Transformation:

Digital transformation in regulated industries, such as health insurance, can feel daunting, to say the least. I spoke with a friend in the industry recently and she had a long list of barriers to driving change in her organization. To name a few: long-tenured employees who have “always done it this way,” limited appetite for risk, and tight budgets due to growing competition and demand from small group employers for bare bones, cost-effective plans. The transformation blockers my friend sees are not uncommon in the vertical, but it’s not stopping some brave leaders from doing it anyway. Across the sector, carriers are making big plays to create a digital business and experience – and their customers are noticing.

A norm among many carriers is manual, paper-based processes across the sales cycle, from quoting to group setup, enrollment, on-boarding, and renewals. Often, processes are only incrementally modified to account for new regulatory requirements and updated plan designs. While existing workflows may be “working,” it is not without consequence.

Our point of view is that by not embracing digital solutions to enhance the sales process, carriers are:

• Increasing internal administrative costs through manual processes and information transfer
• Losing critical time in turning leads into quotes to closed business
• Missing out on the opportunity to capture additional context on customers

While some carriers have dipped their toes into automation by investing in building capabilities themselves, homegrown solutions are time-consuming, add risk, and increase technical debt in an organization. This, along with the barriers noted above, often cause insurers to pull back rather than push ahead. Does any of this sound familiar?

Modernize Your Health Plan Business Processes with Salesforce Industries:

Perficient is recognized as the 6th largest healthcare IT consulting firm and a key leader in the space in the Modern Healthcare’s 2020 survey. We have extensive healthcare experience and support many of the largest health insurance organizations in the US including 5 of the 5 largest health insurance plans and 16 Blue Cross Blue Shield organizations.

Our experts are working with health insurers to leverage front and middle office automation using Salesforce Industries (formerly Vlocity). There are numerous benefits to this cloud-based technology. It is modular, declarative, and built on top of Salesforce allowing users to seamlessly integrate with CRM (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or Health Cloud). Salesforce Industries has incredible depth in and features for the health insurance industry, eliminating the need for complex customizations.

To join the brave organizations modernizing their business and the experience they offer brokers, employers, and members, consider these six steps to start digitizing your workflow:

Step 1: Start with the “Why” by Determining Your Pain Points

Collect as much information as you can around the pain points through each step of the sales, quoting, group set-up, enrollment, on-boarding, and renewal cycles. Talk to brokers, employers, members, and your sales and marketing teams to gather this intel. Where does most of the pain exist?

• From small group employers, you may hear that they feel pressure to make a renewal decision quickly and wish they had more time to understand their plan options.
• Large group employers may tell you that plan information isn’t easy to digest, and they wish they could compare plans, their differences, and costs more easily.
• Brokers may complain that there aren’t enough self-service tools.
• Your sellers might feel that the underwriting and manual census process is too slow and that they keep employers and brokers waiting on a quote too long – making them look bad and damaging relationships. They may have similar feedback around the administrative setup tasks that take place once an opportunity has closed, as well as around the member enrollment and on-boarding processes.
• In the case of my friend, who leads a B2B health plan marketing team at her organization, her pain points revolve around not having insight into the clients currently receiving a quote or approaching renewal. Her team uses a cloud-based automation tool, but it has no connectivity to their on-prem CRM. And even if it did, meaningful information about the status of an opportunity is captured inconsistently based on the seller. This leaves her team resorting to “spray and pray” mass marketing versus personalized outreach using contextual information about where the group is in their journey.

Step 2: Quantify the “Why” and the Consequences for Not Changing

What is the opportunity cost of not addressing these pain points and can it be quantified in terms of efficiency, administrative cost, speed to market, lost business (new and renewing), net promoter score, or through another metric? These will become the measures of your program’s success. If possible, work with your SI partner or technology provider to calculate a return-on-investment analysis.

Step 3: Define Use Cases and Prioritize Them

After building out a strong “why,” decide where to start by determining the initial use cases your organization needs to focus on. The “why,” measures of success, and use cases will form the foundation of your program. Here are some examples of use cases that can be solved by using Salesforce Industries:

• Automate screener process and census capture, and store data on employer’s account.
• Implement self-service quoting and plan comparison tool for small group fully insured employers, with lead capture and quote to cart capabilities.
• Create a self-service large group quoting engine and plan comparison tool that is dynamic based on geographic location and includes core medical offerings with ancillary benefits (such as critical illness or hospital indemnity).
• Digitize the group set-up workflow when business has closed. Replace paper-based processes for submitting tax forms, providing payment, and collecting signatures.
• Gain the ability to send messages in the broker/employer portal or via email with enrollment status and next steps. Create marketing automation based on where a broker/employer is in their sales cycle to keep them moving on their journey.

Step 4: Get Others on Board

If you’re in an organization like my friend, this will be challenging. But the time and thought you put into the steps above will take you far. It’s hard for people to argue with numbers. Communicate transparently and frequently, continuously reinforcing your why. Involve stakeholders in demos of the solution you are building to instill confidence and collaboration. Be willing to accept feedback along the way.

Step 5: Build a High-Performing Team

Identify the technologists within your organization that will contribute to the project, as well as who will represent the voice of the customer and business needs. Adopt a project metholodogy to streamline project delivery and optimize the team’s velocity. At Perficient, we are Scrum enthusiasts and live by the methodology. We think our clients should, too.

Step 6: Leverage a Strong Partner, like Perficient, to Fill Gaps

As a global digital consultancy transforming how the world’s biggest brands connect with customers and grow their business, Perficient has the vertical and technical expertise to fill internal gaps and help health insurance clients on their journey. As mentioned above, 5 out of 5 of the largest health insurers in the U.S. count on us. With more than 400 Salesforce certifications held by members of our tight-knit team, our consultants’ expertise helps clients identify the technology that is “just right” for their needs, implement, and scale. Having the right partner can mean time and money saved trying to recruit, hire, and train resources from within, faster speed to market, and the ability to demonstrate ROI.

Join courageous leaders across the industry and start taking action to digitally transform your organization’s front and middle offices.

If you need more inspiration, watch this overview of Humana’s journey.

Did you miss the HLTH 2019 conference?  HLTH is a great gathering of minds, companies, and governments in one place rallying around healthcare as a whole. With more than 6,000 attendees, over 300 speakers, and 950+ CEOs and founders, this conference centers around how to move healthcare forward.

Kia Mousavi, from our Perficient Digital team, attended the conference and provides some highlights in his blog HLTH 2019: Moving Healthcare Into the Future with Technology

The blog touches on 3 dominant technology themes, the keynote address, plus Jay Jackson’s demo at the Adobe booth.

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Provider organizations are increasingly looking to digital solutions to provide a superior patient experience. Our digital health trends guide looks at five key, interrelated digital health trends impacting healthcare providers. Understanding these trends will help you navigate technology investments and transform data into powerful knowledge that can both enhance the patient experience and position your organization as a leader in next-generation digital health.

Get a quick overview of these hot trends in the below video… and download the guide to learn more.

How do your digital health priorities stand up against these trends?

Join us at “The Future of Healthcare” hosted by the St. Louis Business Journal

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion on the future of healthcare on Thursday, October 3, 2019, from 7:30-9:30 am at the Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis, MO, where a panel of prominent healthcare CEO’s from the St. Louis region will lead the discussion and share insights on this hot topic.

Perficient is a proud supporter of this event which is brought to you by the St. Louis Business Journal. Our on-site team is looking forward to connecting with you – we’d love to see you there!

Event Overview
The St. Louis Business Journal is bringing together the top executives from the region’s biggest healthcare providers for a wide-ranging roundtable discussion on the future of healthcare. Join us to learn about the strengths, challenges and growth opportunities of an industry that serves as the St. Louis metro area’s biggest base of employment.

Featuring Discussion Panel Experts:

• Christine M. Candio, President & CEO, St. Luke’s Health Corporation
• Laura S. Kaiser, President & CEO, SSM Health
• Richard J. Liekweg, President & CEO, BJC HealthCare

Don’t miss out – Only 3 days left to Register!