Hitachi Vantara improves patient outcomes with digital care solutions
You can’t overstate the importance of time in healthcare. By nature, hospitals are fast paced environments and every minute that goes by can result in vastly different patient outcomes or experiences. For healthcare staff working around the clock to deliver efficient and quality care, several hurdles stand in their way. Everyday tasks such as monitoring test results, patient records, and bed capacity, are beset by the use of ageing computer systems that aren’t always able to ‘talk’ to one another. This can lead to gaps in care and require time-poor staff to manually search for information and resources from various departments, cutting into crucial time and taking them away from patient care.
Boosting healthcare interoperability
Hitachi Vantara are proud to have played a role in making hospitals smarter and more data-driven. In the UK, Hitachi’s Digital Care and Operations platform has been deployed into a trust to improve patient flow and efficiency. The initiative has shown a 5-10% reduction in patient length of stay and significantly reduced unplanned care.
The platform collaborates with other systems to deliver a trusted, single source of truth. Bringing together data from EPRs, medical devices, patient administration, theatres and IoT sensors, into one unified dashboard. Digital twin technology is also used to run AI and machine learning systems, allowing teams to test operational, nursing and clinical decisions before any material changes are made.
Connecting systems helps give clinicians a better view of patients in real time and can lead to faster discharges, better patient flow, and overall better care operations. For example, sensors can be used to identify and dispatch help to patients who may need urgent assistance. Used in conjunction with algorithms, they can also help track the spread of infections, helping drive efficiency and reduce patient harm.
This information can not only inform the care a patient needs but enable staff to better manage resources by prioritising high risk cases. Patients also benefit from a more streamlined pathway, allowing them to access the right equipment when they need it, or return home or move on to the next healthcare setting in a faster, safer manner.
Moving toward a predictive healthcare system
Leveraging real-time data, clinicians and other healthcare staff could make strides in delivering care, which is not just preventative, but predictive. For example, Hitachi’s predictive analytics is used to accurately forecast demand and capacity, allowing teams to view and predict operational bottlenecks so they can take the measures needed to relieve that pressure.
By adopting more technology into workflows, healthcare organisations have the power to transform the way they deliver care. Aiding better communication and collaboration, technology is providing the tools needed to relieve significant pressure from staff, allowing them to focus on what really matters – delivering quality patient care.