The healthcare industry is information-intensive given that it is entrusted with safekeeping the medical records of millions of individuals. Access to and the cost of handling large volumes of medical records securely is critical and many cases life-saving.
Healthcare has become increasingly data-driven and tackling the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the industry’s reliance on advanced technologies that use data for real-time diagnosis, tests and prescribed treatments.
In line with these developments, JSE-listed Netcare is overhauling its services, moving away from the siloed and episodic approach typical of traditional healthcare.
The group aims to provide seamless and integrated services across all platforms, enabled by digitisation, and informed by rich data. Real-time data analytics and machine learning have, for example, enabled it to develop a predictive model to forecast potential outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant organisms in hospital wards.
Advancements include a platform that allows patients to access their health and care information. In June, Netcare Greenacres Hospital implemented CareOn, a pioneering electronic medical record system.
“Only a handful of hospitals in the world have the capability for specialists and healthcare teams to view patients’ clinical information, test results and vital observations remotely in real-time,” said Jacques du Plessis, MD of Netcare’s hospital division.
Netcare is the first private healthcare provider in SA to have invested in developing an electronic medical record system and is implementing it in all its facilities.
The facilities encompass primary healthcare, pre-hospital emergency medical services, acute hospital care — including cancer care and renal dialysis — mental healthcare, physical rehabilitation, and occupational health services.
Access to electronic medical records eliminates fragmentation and offers more streamlined services for patients, saving time and effort, “as well as reducing the costs of repetitive investigations that can usually be avoided simply through better access to patient records,” Du Plessis explains.
Mediclinic is also on track to be a data-driven organisation by 2026. It established a data lake and started migrating to the cloud in the current financial year, enabling it to source and integrate data (structured and unstructured) across many applications and processes, including real-time predictive and prescriptive analytics.
In doing so, Mediclinic will offer data-driven innovations that will advance co-ordinated patient care.
The group further plans to to develop machine-learning solutions that identify revenue leakage, reduce costs, and support value-based and virtual care.
Earlier this year it partnered with Finnish healthcare provider Mehiläinen, which owns the business-to-consumer BeeHealthy platform, to launch an app in Switzerland and a virtual clinic in SA and Namibia.
The company’s healthcare apps use the BeeHealthy platform to combine authoritative content with digitally delivered expert advice and treatment.
In September 2021, Mediclinic’s Intercare unit launched a pilot for a digital clinic in Southern Africa. This on-demand service uses chat-based symptom assessments and offers video consultations. Rollout to the public is planned for 2023.
As healthcare companies and providers embrace the digital revolution, compliance with the Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act is paramount. And given data breaches in other industries, concerns linger about the security of medical records.
What happens if there is a data leak or breach at a hospital? Who is liable for the violation of data information? What are the assurances that patients’ data won't be disclosed to third-party companies who could potentially abuse patients’ private information?
Besides due diligence and care being exercised by the companies themselves, SA regulators must also vigorously ensure that any private data is as secure as possible.
Only then will we able to assess with any certainty whether South Africans are willing to embrace virtual healthcare and entrust their most intimate personal information and medical needs to a system that relies on artificial intelligence.
In the meantime Netcare and Mediclinic are driving innovation, improving efficiencies, and creating jobs for data analysts and scientists, while strictly adhering to the PoPI Act.
• Lourie is the founder and editor of TechFinancials.
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