Globally, healthcare systems, still under much of the same pressures as before the pandemic, are now able to pause for a moment. There is now renewed focus on creating a personalized healthcare journey for patients and a better workplace experience for healthcare providers, supported by technology.

The global telehealth and telemedicine market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 37.7% and reach $191.7 billion by 2025, leveraging technology to help transform the patient experience.

The healthcare landscape has never been more open to digital innovation. Healthcare workers worldwide have shown incredible resilience in the face of change. From the global effort to develop life-saving vaccines to the emergence of highly specialized AI-enabled tools and telehealth solutions, innovation has been critical to survival.

62% of health and life science professionals believe they are now very or highly prepared to face a digital future (Avanade, Digital Health Outlook Report, 2022)

Although it's been a tough road for healthcare providers, this innovation has helped to lay the foundations for a better healthcare future—particularly in how data is used.

Data is driving a personalized healthcare revolution
In our whitepaper, “Future-ready Healthcare”, we explore how data is helping to personalize the whole healthcare system—with a focus on enabling patients and the well-being of staff.

Data is already essential to clinical operations and healthcare business operations, but it must be leveraged properly to improve both the efficiency of processes and patient outcomes. The availability of new sources of data and the need to ensure data interoperability throughout the healthcare ecosystem is imperative.

Healthcare leaders are driving a revolution in the personalization of care with a data-driven approach. A modern data platform can connect a range of sources to uncover holistic, valuable and actionable insights.

3 ways in which data is improving patient outcomes

1. Improving individual health
   By better understanding which individuals engage in and benefit from virtual care, providers can offer more customized, patient-centric options. Patient history and wider demographic data can be used to predict which diseases are more likely to occur for specific individuals and focus on preventative treatments to improve long-term health outcomes. Risk factors can be better assessed at the individual level and used to prioritize and personalize care plans.
2. Improving population health
   Data generated by individuals can be securely (and anonymously) fed into wider data sets—without sacrificing patient confidentiality. This has several benefits: insights derived from large population analyses can be used to better allocate budget and resources at a local level. Treatment programs can be assessed to uncover the most effective approaches for achieving the best patient outcomes. Lifestyle-induced risk factors can be addressed with education initiatives. Screening programmes can be introduced improve disease prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment. All combine to provide better quality, better value and more successful population care.
3. Improving the wellbeing of health workers
   76% of healthcare workers reported exhaustion and burnout during the pandemic. As the sector emerges from these trying times, it must seize the opportunity to ease the burden on vital workers to retain vital skills. Much can be done to ease the patient backlog: for example, remote monitoring via smart health devices can be more effective and convenient for both patients and clinicians, as it avoids the scheduling of unnecessary check-ups. In addition, systems can be automated and better linked to enable caregivers to spend less time on administrative work, or better prioritize workloads to address the most vital actions first.

Getting the most out of cloud to further healthcare innovation
The future of healthcare hinges on better health insights for an empowered workforce, improved clinical informatics and operational insights, and more personalized patient engagement. All of this will require secure data sharing, as well as data analytics capabilities.

Certain public clouds developed specifically for healthcare, such as Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, offer an agile, secure and scalable solution—designed for advanced analytics and data sharing. But true success will require the reinvention of the operating model, with the right cloud solutions at the core. Healthcare providers must consider the whole tech stack to remove the bottlenecks in processes and build more agile infrastructure—and this should be addressed with strategic goals in mind.

To find out how partners Accenture, Avanade, and Microsoft, can help improve healthcare access, experience, and outcomes through data, contact the Avanade health and life sciences team.