Data integration platforms unlock many possibilities in healthcare. Business experts can evaluate trends in population health, medical information and records can keep medical professionals updated, and individuals can become active participants in their health journey.
Although the importance of data integration can’t be denied, numerous challenges impact healthcare data integration, from a lack of standardization to securing patient data. But by understanding the difficulties in detail and addressing them head-on, it becomes easier to make healthcare data integration a success.
1. Data Silos
Healthcare data resides across different silos or separate departments, making it difficult to get a complete picture of a patient’s health. Fragmented systems can lead to such issues as an individual repeatedly answering questions about their medical history or getting multiple tests done.
There are many reasons why healthcare data is fragmented. A primary one is that many data sources exist within the healthcare system. For example, a department belonging to general practice might receive results from the radiology and pathology clinics, but those results may arrive at different times in multiple formats to other clinics. Another reason is that different companies use different software systems, making it difficult to exchange information.
To address these challenges, we need to leverage a modern data integration solution that can eliminate the problem of data silos and facilitate better exchanges so information can flow freely.
2. Security Breaches
Healthcare data is extremely sensitive because it entails information related to patients. Healthcare units that do not have appropriate security protocols in place pose risks of breaches and theft.
Modern data integration solutions have an end-to-end encrypted environment that allows only authenticated users to access and use data. This way, healthcare organizations can ensure security and get an accurate picture of healthcare data, thus providing the value promised to patients securely and without difficulty.
3. Lack of Skillsets
Healthcare data proves extremely useful for everyone in the healthcare system, including doctors, patients, researchers, nurses, and even medical device inventors.It enables healthcare organizations to conduct effective diagnoses, improve the quality of medical devices, evaluate patient behaviour, and measure pharmaceutical success.
Obviously, healthcare data can be extremely powerful for various businesses. But it is easy to misinterpret if the proper guidance of data scientists is not present. What’s more, data can be misused if it falls into the wrong hands. Owing to various risks, IT predominantly takes care of healthcare database access.
This problem can be solved using a self-service data integration solution. Self-service data integration solutions enable non-technical business users to consolidate healthcare data while freeing IT to drive more high-value tasks or strategic business priorities.
In short, healthcare organizations will need access to modern data integration solutions to get rid of the problem of data silos, the risk of security breaches, and the over-dependency of IT teams. Solving these problems will enable healthcare units to deliver high-quality care to patients.