Increasing patient satisfaction with improved health system infrastructure

As we move forward in the digital era, healthcare IT is being reshaped by a number of powerful forces.

The advent of new technologies such as machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) is resulting in an influx of data brought about by connected devices, causing patients to expect on-demand, more personalized care. To ensure positive health outcomes, more and more facilities are shifting to digital and electronic technologies to deliver the full continuum of quality care. In fact, Business Intelligence projects that the number of healthcare IoT devices will grow to 646 million by 2020.

As healthcare organizations continue to adopt these new technologies, they also must ensure they have the infrastructure in place to support and process the data they produce. In the fast-paced environment of healthcare, experience often competes with rising costs, time, communication and efficiencies, and patient data can easily become unorganized and dispersed. In the complex interchange of healthcare services, patient records, benefits processing and research, data is vital to ensuring improved patient experiences, and as data becomes more critical for operational success, many health organizations are forced to rethink their storage strategies.

Advancing healthcare innovation
To keep up with growing patient data loads brought about by connected devices, many health organizations are turning to all-flash storage for efficient healthcare delivery. All-flash storage helps to deliver quality patient care with the performance, scalability and security necessary to transform healthcare services. With an all-flash infrastructure, medical professionals have faster data access to make improved treatment decisions and allow more focus on the patient.

The performance, simplicity and efficiency of all-flash storage technology also allows for healthcare IT teams to better address the changing infrastructure demands with a new level of flexibility and speed. All-flash not only improves patient outcomes and clinical productivity, but also allows for real-time analytics to enhance innovation and advance treatment potential. All-flash benefits health IT in multiple dimensions. Here are five reasons why all-flash storage is becoming the new foundation for progressive healthcare organizations across all facets of delivery:

1. Performance: Compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDD), all-flash provides faster access to critical data at the point of care, allowing for consistent, reliable and immediate retrieval of patient records, X-rays, MRIs and test results. For El Rio Community Health, a non-profit healthcare organization with 40 locations, technology is placed at the center of healthcare excellence. Looking to deliver the greatest reliability and highest application performance possible to medical practitioner and patients, El Rio implemented all-flash technology to overcome severe latency issues with their mission critical EHR applications. As a result, not only did performance improve, but also user satisfaction and patient care.

2. Mixed workloads and analytics: All-flash storage optimizes hospital infrastructure to support mixed workload environments with no performance impact. This capability is key to delivering consistently high performance in complex workload environments such as EHR systems or running real-time analytics on production databases. In addition to improving patient care delivery, all-flash provides new operational efficiencies that enhance clinical research to develop greater insight into population health trends.

3. Desktop virtualization and mobility: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is an important and growing element in successful healthcare delivery. Any latency lag at the point of treatment interferes with productivity and timely care – and could have serious implications. The speed of data processing brought about by all-flash technology ensures increased productivity and faster patient consultations, improving the overall opportunity for clinical efficiency. For example, not-for-profit organization Memorial Hospital, supporting a comprehensive range of health and wellness services, looked to modernize its IT infrastructure by consolidating EHR systems and healthcare applications, including high-performance storage implementation to support 1,800 virtual desktops. Through the power of all-flash, Memorial achieved its performance goals at an affordable cost with a clear path to future growth.

4. Rapid analysis: All-flash platforms allow for faster analysis for critical data to improve patient results and lead more quickly to practical and innovative treatment outcomes. By processing millions of data points across a patient’s health records, all-flash provides the enhanced functionality to drive actionable insights from the infrastructure to IT operations.

5. Improved TCO: While flash storage costs are declining, they are also transforming storage economics in a way the health IT industry has not experienced in recent years. The combination of real-time data compression and reduplication allows for less overall capacity required to store patient and care data. With all-flash, health IT leaders can maximize cost-efficiency and refocus their efforts on the patient rather than operational and financial concerns.

Accelerating patient care in the future
As patient data loads continue to grow, it is critical that health facilities have the technological infrastructure in place to support the rapid increase of information and patient expectations. The proliferation of data in the healthcare industry brings opportunities to garner new insights and create solutions that can drastically improve the patient experience. By implementing all-flash platforms, health organizations will transform patient outcomes and satisfaction, allowing hospital staff to service patients with the greatest reliability and performance possible. Ultimately, an all-flash infrastructure provides the performance required to handle growing data and allow medical staff more time to focus on patient care.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.

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