Private healthcare needs to embrace data fluidity if it is to deliver effective treatment in a proactive rather than a reactive way.
This is according to Dr Anushka Patchava, deputy chief medical officer at Vitality, (pictured second left) who was speaking at LaingBuisson’s private acute healthcare conference.
Patchava challenged delegates to move to the cloud more quickly to empower physicians to make speedier decisions.
Drawing a comparison between the financial services and healthcare sectors, Patchava added: “I can walk into a bricks and mortar bank and they will have my data. They will know what I’m going to spend. They will know my salary. They will have access to my account. We don’t have that in healthcare.
“You can’t walk into any clinic or any physical environment and expect your digital data to be transferred and that data fluidity is holding us back from really delivering high quality services in a cost effective manner.
“So for me, data at the core is important but the data fluidity is a challenge that we need to solve.”
And looking ahead as the country emerges from the pandemic, Patchava said it was important the sector embraces hybrid models of delivering treatment.
“Phydigital models are all about blending physical and digital because the pandemic told us that customers can do digital in healthcare,” Patchava continued.
“Customers like it but not everyone is going to stick with digital. Not every consultation works with digital.
“It’s very important for us to recognise that giving customers the choice is how we get to better outcomes and blending the digital models alongside data fluidity is what needs to change.
“It’s not really where the healthcare worker treats you. It’s not only how they see you but it’s what they have in terms of your data to facilitate that consultation in an effective way.”