Put Leonardo Carvalho
Digital technology has been radically transforming healthcare. This is a process that has been ongoing for decades, but the pandemic has been decisive in making it clear that smartphones and apps will increasingly become an integral part of medicine, mediating our relationships with doctors, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies.
We are well aware of the most visible part of this digital revolution, illustrated by teleconsultations and other forms of remote care. But there are several other technological innovations that we are not so familiar with and that, nevertheless, are transforming the health sector in an even more profound way.
A good example is the so-called interoperability. You may never have heard this word, but you have certainly come into contact with it in practice.
Consider this scenario: You’re trying to access a new website or app and you’re given the option to sign in with a Google or Facebook account. Or you’re completing a purchase and Google offers to fill in your credit card details.
This is interoperability. It is the ability to connect two or more digital systems so that they can “talk” to each other, share data and create a relationship of technological cooperation.
Interoperability is different from integration, as there is no fusion or dependency between systems. Each continues to exist independently – in the example given, the systems of Google, Facebook and the new app, although they exchange information and speak the same language, remain separate.
But how does this principle apply to the healthcare sector? In this context, interoperability is enabling the connection of systems in laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies and other organizations in the sector, such as health plan managers.
There are many advantages to this approach. Firstly, it makes the entire patient journey more agile and accurate, especially in the case of new appointments. With connected digital systems, the doctor who sees a patient for the first time has access to their entire history of appointments and exams, which, consequently, will make the professional's decision-making more assertive.
Healthcare companies can also cross-reference information from different sources to create more accurate profiles of their customers, which helps to organize the entire operation, predict costs and design service packages that are more suited to the real needs of patients. The same applies to government agencies, which are able to create more efficient and better targeted public policies.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of interoperability is the possibility of more proactive care. Today, the vast majority of services provided by healthcare institutions are reactive, that is, the patient seeks out the institution, which then responds to the demand brought by the patient.
Proactive service means that the institution itself initiates this contact, which is only possible when it has sufficient technology to identify trends, predict demands and make suggestions.
It also means improving the patient's longitudinal journey, that is, their routine follow-up over time after a consultation or procedure. The wealth of data brought by interoperability makes it possible to refine and even partially automate care coordination models, so that the healthcare institution can ensure that each patient follows the recommendations of the specialist doctor, as well as opening channels of communication and resolving doubts.
All of this shows that the healthcare sector is one of the sectors that has the most to gain from the existence of more cooperative digital systems, capable of communicating with each other to explore the full potential of the data they accumulate.
In this sense, digital innovations such as interoperability have arrived not to “dehumanize” healthcare, but to do the opposite: to allow, in an intelligent, economical and automated way, the construction of a more personalized healthcare system that is closer to each patient.
*Leonardo Carvalho is CTO of Nilo Saúde.
