Patient safety is, of course, an ongoing concern in hospitals and clinics that can be addressed through better processes and technological solutions. The healthcare environment is constantly shifting in order to accommodate these new advances. The changes are leading to greater speed and efficiency throughout the organization, but the wellbeing of the patient still has to come first.
This means that, no matter how fast the clinic can eventually process new patients, it must still be able to accurately perform diagnoses, keep perfect records, and ensure that the appropriate treatment is administered at the right time. These are critical elements of providing effective healthcare, and some of the options available through cloud computing is making it possible.
Clinical cloud computing could be said to improve patient safety in one simple way: Faster technology means faster responses and treatments in critical situations. Of course, the benefits and processes go much deeper than that, but this is a good place to start. If, for example, a caregiver has to wait to use certain applications at an end-point, it can significantly delay treatment and cause other problems. Cloud technology has made it possible to access the necessary apps and data from any device, and with a single sign-on, which can reduce some of the time-consuming activities that would otherwise hinder more effective treatments.
IT infrastructure focused on patient safety
The cloud is making inroads into hospitals, clinics, biotech firms, and more. In each of these cases, there are many ways that an IT infrastructure based in cloud technology can improve the level of care and safety that those organizations can offer.
Every patient has different needs, and if the clinic is dealing with a large number of people, things can get lost, details forgotten and diagnoses rushed. Doctors have to gather and share a lot of information -- sometimes within the building, sometimes over huge geographical areas -- which can also potentially create delays that hinder treatments. The right IT infrastructure should be able to address all these concerns by tracking the needs of each patient, even in an environment where such a thing would normally be extremely complex.
Benefits for healthcare providers
Cloud computing solutions can potentially limit the amount of time that doctors and nurses spend searching for open end-points and time spent accessing and re-accessing different applications. With a single sign-on, authentication is much easier, even at different end-points and across multiple applications. This can lead to faster, more secure access to important patient data.
Basically, moving the IT infrastructure into the cloud can create opportunities for healthcare providers to spend more time delivering effective care and less time managing client systems.
Benefits for patients
It has already been mentioned that faster responses to problems is the most directly beneficial aspect for the patient, but it goes even further than that. Cloud solutions can offer the power to perform clinical data analysis at a fast and more cost-effective rate than ever before. This can be extremely beneficial for patients who require some serious tests.
Previously, it would have taken days, weeks, or even months to complete certain blood tests, run RNA sequences, protein folding, or other procedures. Patients had to wait an indeterminably long time to “get results back from the lab,” which could lead to added stress, confusion and frustration. By taking advantage of cloud capabilities, this time can be significantly shortened and the treatment process accelerated.
What has changed that makes the cloud so important in healthcare?
One of the biggest developments that have impacted IT departments throughout the healthcare environment is the move to electronic health records. This has been a long time in coming, and the goal has been to take some of the traditional, legacy systems and replace them with a more convenient and reliable processes. This change has taken a lot of time, but the potential improvements to patient care and treatment have also been rather large.
As data is collected for these records, it can be transferred directly to the cloud, eliminating the potential for it to get lost somewhere between point A and point B. In some situations, it may even be possible to send information directly from monitoring systems and other sensors, so there’s no chance for user error to creep into the process at all. The cloud can store, process, and distribute that information as needed.
Electronic medical records are just the start, though. Eventually, cloud applications could impact communication systems, laboratory information systems, pharmacy systems, physician order entry and other elements of patient care. The more effectively these processes can be integrated with other applications and procedures in the hospital or clinic, the better care each patient will receive.
How does it really improve safety?
Medical procedures come with a certain amount of risk. Whether the problems stem from misdiagnoses, lost paperwork, or faulty observations, there is a potential for errors that can create safety issues. By incorporating cloud solutions, doctors and other providers can reduce the number of errors (or catch and correct those that can’t be eliminated), track patient performance, and receive immediate information to make better decisions.
Legacy healthcare processes for collecting important, vital data required a lot of work to collect, input, and analyze. There is, unfortunately, room there for errors to creep in and slow the process. Anything that creates latency or hinders real-time access to data can be problematic.
The cloud offers immediate access to applications and information, making a more rapid response after unexpected and unwanted occurrences possible. These solutions can also improve communications between patient and provider and help derive the right calculations for treatments, leading to fewer mistakes and an increase in shared information. More specifically, cloud solutions can improve a number of aspects of the healthcare environment that can impact patient safety, including:
Monitoring - Repetitive activities can become very tedious in the long run, opening up room for errors. Watching to see what happens to a patient throughout an extended treatment, checking up to see if they’re taking or refilling their prescriptions can be difficult for a person to consistently follow through. It’s just human nature to lose focus and let mistakes happen.
Some monitoring procedures could easily be automated, sending all the important information directly to the cloud where it can be properly analyzed. If an alert is called for, the cloud application can then send the necessary information to the doctors or clinicians.
Patient history - Instant access to the medical history of every patient means that caregivers will immediately know if there are any dangerous drug allergies or certain mental conditions that may impact their treatment.
Communication process - Handoffs are common in the medical industry as patients switch from one doctor to the next, one location to the next, or one kind of treatment to the next. Handing off the necessary data could prove problematic in the traditional model, with the possibility of lost forms and information being a real issue.
With the cloud, it’s not a matter of handing something off. It’s a matter of multiple healthcare professionals accessing the same information from the same location. Information exchange is much easier when everyone is simply signing on to the same database to get the necessary information.
Structured processes - What happens if someone fills out a prescription incorrectly? What if they write a note that is completely illegible to the average observer? Apps are designed to disallow that kind of behavior. In other words, many cloud applications technically restrict behavior and activities, but by doing so they force the clinicians to deal with tasks in a specific way. This means they will have to provide every last piece of information in a standardized format. Ideally, the app will also inform the caregiver whether the data was entered correctly and alert them if their prescribed treatment has some adverse effects.
Emergency response - There’s always a chance that, despite everyone’s best efforts, some undiagnosed problems could cause serious issues. The only thing the healthcare provider can do at this point is to try to react quickly and correctly to the problem. This requires access to accurate information and a wide range of apps in the cloud. The right programs may even be able to detect some signals that things are going wrong and suggest potential causes even before they start to get out of hand.
Current adoption and application
The use cases for cloud computing in clinical settings cover a wide spectrum of applications. Many companies involved with the research side of healthcare were quick to adopt this computing model, and organizations like Bateman and Wood used the cloud to assemble a full human genome with 140 million individual reads, which required serious computing power to manage the alignment and search sequence. Kudtarkar et al were also able to use the cloud to hundreds of thousands of genome-to-genome comparisons to complete the job in just over 200 hours and for approximately 40 percent less of a budget than expected.
From the academic uses, the cloud spread to applications more directly applicable to patient care and safety. The American Occupational Network, for example, digitized its records and updated its clinical processes with these tools, allowing them to provide more accurate information for proper billing. This shortened the time it took to create a bill from seven full days to less than 24 hours. Medical transcription costs, as a result, were also reduced by 80 percent. This increase in efficient record keeping and patient tracking means fewer hindrances to the healthcare process and allows patients to get the treatment they need.
Another kind of safety
Shifting any information does concern some organizations because they want to have direct control over the security measures. In the medical industry, this is doubly important as hospitals may be saving some very sensitive data off site. This has led to a number of regulations around cloud apps for the healthcare industry.
In order to protect patient information, cloud systems must restrict access to authorized users only, and there should also be options to track access, create redundant storage solutions, and instituting plans for dealing with breaches or unexpected downtime.
What is holding the industry back?
Despite the observed benefits of using cloud technologies to improve patient safety, there is still some hesitation in many organizations about switching away from their legacy systems. This uncertainty could be related to the costs involved with making the switch or concerns that it may take too long to train the staff on the new procedures.
The entire organization is going to have to actively participate with the new cloud processes in order to ensure its success and provide more safety for each patient. As EHRs become the standard for record keeping in the healthcare industry, cloud applications can be even more useful and convenient.
Providing reliable, individualized care means that you are going to have to have a lot of coordinated data, which is achievable only if everyone is working together on the same systems the same way. The initial switch may seem like a difficult process, but the potential benefits for the patient make it a valuable effort.
