Open Text : Why OpenText has so much to offer the Healthcare sector

This is a pivotal moment for the Healthcare sector. We have just gone through a period of incredible disruption. Content will be increasingly critical as organizations strive to improve operations and better understand and personalize the patient journey.

COVID-19 has added fuel to the fire in Healthcare's move toward digital transformation. Many of the significant changes we need to make because of the pandemic are forcing us to embrace new solutions quickly. Advanced technologies in cloud, SaaS, mobility, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics are redefining the healthcare process and experience for all market participants.

I joined OpenText™ because it's an organization with a significant role to play in helping payers, providers, and integrated delivery networks deal with the many challenges they face in the years to come. Increasing speed, innovation, and collaboration across growing ecosystems of new and traditional partners, personalizing, and improving the patient experience, and driving safety and security for staff and patient will all require that we are able to integrate insight and action in real-time as part of routine care delivery.

There are many challenges to address. In this blog I'd like to concentrate on just one:

Remote health

Remote health is not just here to stay - for many patients, the breadth and depth of telehealth services will be expanded. This requires a reassessment of our patient experience and how we tackle patient engagement.

The move to telemedicine and remote health has been dramatically accelerated in the wake of COVID-19. Issues that have delayed deployments for years are crumbling under the weight of pragmatic risk management for providers and patients. Issues around reimbursement, privacy, and parochial practice management have quickly been sidelined as both patients and providers try to craft a safer model for the delivery of patient care.

This is both good practice as well as good business. Providers must try to find a way to engage with patients more safely if they hope to return to the pre COVID-19 volume of patients seeking health maintenance and elective procedures.

In addition to pandemic pressures, in the U.S. the ONC's 21^st Century Cures Act specifies that payers and providers add significant new digital interaction capabilities for their patients. This requires that a wealth of data, including most clinical notes and electronic health information must be shared free of charge with patients on demand. The act specifically requires that this data be available to a patient's chosen smartphone app by October 2022. This is fueling a renewed focus on digital engagement with patients and rapid adoption of the HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard.

These market realities are driving investment in what is quickly becoming known as the 'Digital Front Door.' Organizations are beginning to create digital patient engagement to manage the actual interaction with patients by providers and clinical staff. Electronic scheduling of physical visits and tests, digital patient meetings, and remote telemedicine visits are all a priority now as we try to build patient relationships around everyday preventive care and wellness. New, disruptive technologies, including cloud-based systems, mobile apps, and AI, are maturing rapidly to meet these new requirements.

For providers and payers this must be a wake-up call. These capabilities are quickly becoming table stakes in highly competitive markets. Suppliers are rushing to bring new, feature-rich solutions to market and investors are funding a record number of companies in telemedicine/telehealth driving rapid increases in M&A and new product launches.

It really is an exciting time to be joining what I believe is one of the world's leading Healthcare technology providers.

OpenText has a range of solutions designed to accelerate digital transformation, enhance mobile patient engagement, and deliver highly secure content management. To learn more, please visit our website.