Healthcare industry is one of the most sensitive across the globe. It impacts the lives of people physically, mentally, financially, and emotionally. With the new economy and advancements in technology, clients are seeking quality services. There is a need to focus on modern, quality and reliable patient care services.
Healthcare organizations are facing a number of significant IT challenges that require swift solutions. From patient data management to dealing with the increasing risk of cyberattacks, these issues are impacting the ability of healthcare providers to deliver quality care. Here is a list of 10 major IT challenges healthcare organizations are currently facing:
When it comes to maintaining hospital security, infection and disease prevention and enhancing patient safety, healthcare organizations have been striving to deliver excellent services. However, there are major IT challenges facing healthcare organizations today. They include;
1. Dynamics of Advanced Healthcare Technology
The technology world is advancing by the day. Hardware, healthcare software and mobile app development services have made the industry quite competitive. Today, medical devices are interconnected in different ways through IoT.
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The market is expected to experience more interconnectedness in the coming years. Software applications and mobile apps used in hospitals are powered by advanced technologies including machine learning and AI.
Therefore, there is a need to harness the power of such technologies to deliver the best in the industry. This helps to create and develop a healthy connected environment in the industry.
Clinicians, doctors, and healthcare leaders need to forge stronger ties with software development company. This helps to enhance business models and adoption of useful modern technologies in the industry.
2. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is a challenge because of the nature of patient information collected and stored by healthcare organizations. Healthcare and medical sector have become prime targets for cybercriminals. Data breaches in the industry occur yearly. This creates mistrust amongst the service providers and patients.
With decentralized systems, sensitive data in the industry is vulnerable to attacks. As such, healthcare organizations still have to ensure that their systems are protected from cybercriminals.
3. Data and Incorporated Health Services
The use of AI integrated software app offers a massive amount of data to healthcare organizations. It generates different information including patient medical records, transcript and clinical notes, connected device data and other important medical information.
However, there is no proper data management systems and architecture that secures information collected from different sources.
There is still a problem in a relational and non-relational database that could help the organizations to handle data efficiently and safely. As an organization grows, an increase of data is achieved and the database can be scaled to provide room for more information.
4. Cost Crisis
Cost crisis in the healthcare industry is an IT challenge that needs to be addressed. This includes medical mobile app development, to the experts who play a major role in device manufacturing, healthcare costs to drug manufacturing and insurance, and the rising costs in the organizations. These discourage patients from seeking advanced healthcare services including CT scans, lab tests and making follow up visits.
There is a need to rely more on healthcare information technology and to reach an agreement with relevant stakeholders to reduce costs.
5. Adopting BYOD (Bring your Own Device)
With smartphones getting bigger and better, healthcare providers are taking their services home. They are adopting BYOD to deliver different services for increased productivity, reduced hardware charges and affordable communication. While these benefits are amazing, the associated IT risks are high.
It is hard to manage an efficient and secure IT network within the medical environment. Therefore, there is a need for an organization to develop a very robust policy for safety, efficiency and quality device usage.
6. HIPAA Compliance
For many years now, HIPAA has been a challenge to healthcare organizations. The technology landscape is evolving and the role of IT in HIPAA is quite crucial in keeping ePHI (electronic personal healthcare information secure, safe, and well protected from cybercriminals. HIPAA has stringent rules that must be observed when handling healthcare data.
7. Hospital Security
Most healthcare organizations are open round the clock. With a high number of people accessing such facilities, strict security measures should be observed. Access to restricted areas should only be done by authorized staff.
However, due to advanced technologies, criminals can use different devices to access such areas. As such, there has been drug thefts, medical equipment’s, assets and violence. This should be reviewed for IT innovations that provide enhanced security.
8. Non-Compliance with Regulatory Standards
IT is a broad field in the healthcare industry. Noncompliance with set regulatory standards for instance in seeking and using healthcare app development service can disrupt normal operations, the safety of employees and patients, fines and poor quality of healthcare.
Different organizations need to learn of updated rules required of healthcare organizations for IT measures that work for the benefit of everyone.
9. Healthcare Staffing Challenges
Healthcare organizations are also facing staffing challenges. While IT and other healthcare technologies are helping service providers in many ways, patient diagnostics in remote regions is still a challenge. Live streaming, imaging and other IT healthcare still need continuous professional development.
More advanced infrastructure is needed to reduce staffing storages, especially those who have the technological know-how on modern medical devices. You will realize that influx in technology has revolutionized the way medical education and training is offered in the industry.
There is also a shift from the traditional clinical interview with more focus on quality and better IT communication. Without enough employees, realizing such goals becomes a hard task.
10. Disruptive Innovation
Healthcare organizations are also facing external forces that pose serious disruptive innovation in the industry. Many people have embraced smartphones. More and more mobile apps are being developed to suit different sectors in the healthcare industry.
What’s more, there are e-commerce platforms that are also changing the way business is being carried out. As such, the industry is physically and emotionally vulnerable to the quality of services offered by the external market.
Today, there are 5 major IT innovative disrupters causing challenges to the healthcare industry. This includes;
- The digital revolution.
- The amazon effect.
- Personalized medicine.
- Regulatory change.
- Consumerism.
With such disrupters, new players emerge outside the healthcare industry leading to unhealthy competition. Most external market disrupters are powered by technology. They introduce different digital disruptions in consumerism and healthcare services into the industry. This raises an alarm bell to the existing providers to invest as soon as possible to emerging technologies and to embrace digital transformation.