Telehealth

Dr. Michael Zaroukian, VP, CMIO and CTO of Sparrow Health, says the health system had the infrastructure in place to be first in line to do virtual care when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The COVID-19 global crisis has undoubtedly brought about huge changes in healthcare systems all over the world. One of the major impacts which it had would be its role in serving as an impetus to accelerate the digital transformation of healthcare globally. At the HIMSS APAC Malaysia Digital Health Summit session titled “Accelerating the Digital Transformation of Healthcare” hosted by Tim Kelsey (Senior Vice President HIMSS Analytics International), Christian Besler (Chief Digital Officer of Ayala Health Philippines) and Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin (Senior Deputy Director of Ministry of Health Malaysia), the panelists discuss the various approaches which the Philippines and Malaysia have taken to continue providing online healthcare services to their citizens amidst this global crisis. Steps taken by the respective governments In the Philippines, a huge amount of emphasis was placed on corporate health. This was done in a bid to help employees detect and effectively manage chronic diseases at an early stage which would in turn help to greatly reduce medical insurance costs that will be borne by employers eventually. Primary care clinics were built within large corporations themselves, greatly facilitating employees’ visits to the clinics. With the onset of COVID-19, doctors were open-minded and fast thinking which allowed for the smooth and swift transition to telehealth. With this continued provision of medical services to employees, they could continue working from the safety of their homes whilst receiving the appropriate medical assistance.  Similarly, Malaysia was able to quickly put together a COVID-19 digital response with 6 main focus areas: Strategic Risk and Communication Community Engagement Operational Efficiency  Insights and Foresights Infrastructure and Upgrade Research and Clinical Trials  Mainstream media coupled with social media were the key online platforms which were utilised to provide constant updates about new cases or any cluster outbreaks within the country. Contact tracing applications such as “MySejahtra” and “MyTrace” were set up using a QR code digital log system. Each store/restaurant would have a unique QR code which stores the phone number of each individual entering when the user scans the code. In the event that someone who enters the store gets positively diagnosed with the virus, this information can then be promptly disseminated to other visitors of the store and appropriate quarantine actions meted out if necessary. Virtual clinics and electronic appointments were also made readily available to the public so they can continue to receive the required healthcare services even from their homes.  Numerous operational systems were also deployed in order to manage the sudden influx of infected patients. Queue management systems and facility based systems were set up to aid in crowd control and enforce social distancing measures, effectively mitigating further spread of the virus. eCOVID19, a data collection system comprising of analytical tools and various dashboards served to help monitor new COVID-19 cases and changes on the ground which paved the way for better government decision making in their policies. On the record “COVID actually made us realise that a proper data collection tool/system is very important” said Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin. She postulates that Malaysia should continue to strengthen  redesign the healthcare systems as well as enhance digital technology and innovation in healthcare even with the passing of COVID-19. All these, coupled with the collaboration and coordination of the various sectors of the country will be sufficient to help “revitalize the Malaysian economy which was badly impacted by COVID-19”. To gain access to the on-demand video of the keynote dialogue, please email Evelyn.Wee@himss.org. 

UPMC spin-off Curavi Health, CarePointe and U.S. Health Systems will work together on integrated pop health analytics and virtual-care tools for nursing homes and other underserved elder populations.

The MA FQHC Telehealth Consortium is ensuring patient access wherever it can, and generating revenue to sustain health center operations during the pandemic.

In the first episode of HIMSS Australia Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Tim Kelsey, Senior Vice President, HIMSS Analytics International, guest speakers Prof Peter Sprivulis, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Western Australian Department of Health Service, Adj. A/Prof Learne Durrington, Chief Executive Officer, Western Australian Primary Health Alliance, Giles Nunis, Partner, Deloitte Consulting Pty Ltd and Paul Lancaster Alliance Manager, Commvault discussed Western Australia (WA)’s rapid acceleration towards digital health due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and early steps in the WA Health Digital Strategy 2020-2030. KEY LESSONS LEARNT IN DIGITAL HEALTH FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC “At one level, what (COVID-19) has provided us is a rapid accelerator of our digital strategy. If you look at the important elements of our digital strategy, two of the three principal drivers of the strategy is to improve customer relationship management and increase adoption of telehealth,” said Prof Sprivulis. “What we have seen in terms of our contact tracing solution in Australia, is that contract tracing is really the ‘pointy end’ of customer relationship management when it comes to COVID-19. We went through a very rapid process of implementing a Salesforce-based solution for our contact tracing, which has been quite successful, allowing us to keep tabs on those not only in quarantine, but those who were self-isolating and following up with other contacts to help contain the spread in the community,” he added. Given the large geographical size of WA, COVID-19 saw a very rapid adoption of virtual methods of consultation of WA’s hospital-based outpatient clinics. Rates that were previously in low 10 to 15% rapid moved to the 60 to 80% across a range of clinics and hospitals. Echoing what Prof Sprivulis said, Adj. A/Prof Durrington summed it up in the phrase, “We had ten years of reforms in ten days.” She said that it not only changed about what clinicians thought might be possible using telehealth, it changed the consumer-patient view. “The patient expectation will now also be a driver, so we’ll see a push-pull, rather than a pull-push. General practice and allied health services also rapidly moved to a range of clinical interventions of video and phone. I think the invaluable piece is that we learnt quite a lot of what we do sustain this going forward but the change in practice was dramatic across the continuum of care,” she said. Nunis noted that while there were a lots of positives and quick adoption of virtual methods of care, it has also highlighted the gap areas, such as the vulnerable who may not have access to technology and may not be able to use virtual capabilities beyond their phones. COVID-19 has also shifted the focus away from a clinical setting to a consumer, data driven setting. Lancaster observed that with a lot of digital projects being fast tracked, comes with challenges related to patient identity alignment issues and ensuring that data is kept safe and secure. “Healthcare spending from a data management perspective is definitely on the increase, particularly where the diagnostics and the monitoring of the data and using the data for more analytics for business,” he added. THE TRAJECTORY OF THE WA HEALTH DIGITAL STRATEGY 2020-2030 The WA Health Digital Strategy 2020–2030 sets a vision of how digital innovation and technology will transform health services and the way they will be delivered to the people of Western Australia in the next decade. Prof Sprivulis explained that WA has fairly complex health system – the private sector is mostly funded by the federal government which supports private hospitals and specialist services, allied health and GPs. The state-funded sector offers most of the acute services and range of community services such as child health, mental health, aboriginal health services and rural/remote health services. “These two methods of funding make for some challenges in terms of pursuing of our digital health strategy.” The key outcomes that he expects to see over the next 10 years are ongoing adoption and spread of telehealth as a means of efficiently providing care to WA’s population, as well as improve customer engagement and empower them to be more involved in their care. An important third component is the decentralization of services as part of the digital strategy, away from the large expensive hospitals with a greater focus on disease management in the community, and the digital tools to support that. “The landscape for those digital tools is still fairly immature, and in Australia we don’t have terrific interoperability between GP desk tops and hospital-based systems. With the emergence of My Health Record, we’re seeing greater adoption of standards for the sharing of information. But a significant challenge we will have in implementing this decentralization is how do we overcome some of the financial barriers and come up with a funding model that’s shared between state and federal, that perhaps allows us to move some of our outpatient work from our hospitals, and make better use of services that are closer to an individual’s home, be it involving a GP, private specialist or allied health practitioner,” commented Prof Sprivulis. He noted that clinicians know at an emotional, intellectual level the need to move towards digital, but they may not want to do it at a practical level if it brings about inconvenience. Click here to register for the next episode (Queensland) of the HIMSS Australia Digital Dialogue Series.  

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