Tech Talks Transform Health Care Design Strategy
ATLANTA — On Oct. 28, Auburndale, Mass.-based Health Care 20/20 held two panel discussions at the Cobb Energy Centre located in Atlanta. The discussions were collectively called Innovation in Practice and shed light on expert plans to integrate cutting-edge technology into health care-related professions and facilities.
Randy Martin, chief of Atlanta-based Valvular and Structural Heart Disease Center of Excellence at Piedmont Heart Institute, acted as the moderator. Panelists included CEOs, medical officers, presidents and vice presidents of some of the nation’s most respected health care facilities.
“The most significant innovation in health care over the past several years isn’t a single piece of equipment, a new technology, a new procedure or even a new medication,” said Alan Bier, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Lawrenceville, Ga.-based Gwinnett Medical Center, in a statement. “Rather, an entire industry has been transformed by advancements in health care information technology, especially as it relates to coordinating care across the continuum of outpatient and inpatient settings.”
The discussions were focused on how technological advancements have enabled health care to extend far beyond its traditional reach. Without technology, outpatient facilities could not function, and physicians could not provide an individual approach when providing care for patients, according to Bier.
The talks also focused on Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the way those systems manage hospital information. EHRs can track data over time for a single patient or group of patients. The data allows physicians to analyze treatment plans to see what is working and not working, and improve the overall quality of care across the patient population. Using systems like these enables health care facilities to better serve the patient population by reducing the number of emergency room visits, long-term hospitalizations and imaging tests and procedures.
“The single most significant area of innovation today has to be information management,” said Mark Cohen, the vice president of medical affairs and chief quality officer at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, in a statement.
Alongside the introduction of EHRs, another information management system called MyChart takes things one step further and encourages hospitals to run on a fully automated portal. Piedmont Healthcare introduced MyChart, a web-based platform that gives patients access to medical information and lets them communicate directly with their doctor’s office.
“With such vast knowledge and better, faster communication in our pockets, our ability to provide better health care in so many different ways has been enormously expanded,” said Peter Rhee, chief of acute care surgery and medical director of the Atlanta-based Marcus Trauma Center, in a statement.