During an Unqork-sponsored featured session as part of Becker’s Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting held virtually in May, three experts discussed the benefits and implementation strategies of a digital front door for patients. The panelists were:
- Kara Dennis, Head of Healthcare at Unqork
- Olya Ossipova, Client Director at Unqork
- Rob Cimino, Vice President for Digital Health Strategy and Implementation at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City
Four takeaways:
1. Multiple siloed applications make digital health challenging. As an early EHR adopter, Maimonides Medical Center uses several best-of-breed applications. While most vendors have developed patient-facing web and mobile access — which allow patients to schedule appointments, pay bills and access health records — having a series of siloed applications means that patients must have multiple user accounts and passwords to interact with hospital systems. This is not a very consumer-friendly experience.
2. A digital front door provides patients an integrated experience. Maimonides is developing a digital front door equipped with a set of patient-facing features, such as finding a provider, scheduling an appointment, paying a bill, engaging in virtual care and completing pre-visit forms.
Building this digital front door is a challenge for Maimonides, as not all of its vendors offer the same level of integration; some offer software development kits, some offer application programming interfaces and some don’t currently have any exposed integration components. “Our hope is that over time our vendors will become more seamlessly integrated with us, so that they become the engine to the digital front door,” Mr. Cimino said.
3. Unqork’s no-code platform simplifies development. Maimonides’ digital front door is being developed using Unqork’s visual drag-and-drop, no-code enterprise application development platform. No-code enables faster builds and shorter time to market, improved quality and reduced costs for building and maintaining enterprise solutions, compared to those built with code or low-code. “The savings in time and in maintenance can really bring down costs,” Ms. Dennis said.
4. Digital health systems benefit both patients and providers. Over the next five years, more patients will be interacting with health systems digitally. A single integrated solution, like a digital front door, not only simplifies the patient experience but benefits providers as well. “We want to make it as easy as possible for care providers to interact with their patients, have more face time with their patients and still have a recommendation system so that they’re able to get the best quality of care for that individual,” Ms. Ossipova said.
To learn more about this session, click here.
