Healthcare leaders back increased use of technology
Research reveals European leaders think their organisations need to embrace technology in order to improve services
More than half of healthcare leaders across Europe believe their organisations need to embrace technology in order to improve services, new research states.
Data from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) sponsored by Ricoh, shows 71% of healthcare leaders believe their organisation needs to change faster over the next three years. This change will be driven by the increasing importance of technology platforms, with more than half of European healthcare leaders identifying technology as the biggest agent of change.
Healthcare leaders emphasised that the most-significant barrier preventing the speed at which they change is time constraints on healthcare professionals. Other major bottlenecks to increasing overall agility include the challenge of effectively linking technology platforms, and the presence of multiple and potentially-conflicting initiatives.
“The need for immediate and secure access to medical information that’s easily shareable between patients and healthcare providers, coupled with access to critical information at any time, from any location, are crucial factors increasing pressure on UK healthcare leaders to become more digitally-centric,” said Alasdair McCormick, national sales director for government at Ricoh UK.
“Improving healthcare’s core business processes is without doubt the foundation for transformation. At Ricoh we’re committed to improving the sector’s approach to information management and ultimately allow medical and healthcare professionals to focus on what they do best - provide the best possible patient care.”
Echoing the newly-released EIU research, the healthcare industry across the UK has been focused on speeding up the progress of digital transformation.
In 2013, Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, challenged the NHS to become paperless by 2018. This was one of many directives within the sector to save costs and improve services, in turn making the NHS the most-modern digital health service in the world.
“We worked with NHS Fife to help overcome its digital transformation challenges, to better serve its community of 360,000,” said McCormick.
“We delivered substantial cost savings, a reduction in print waste of 1.2 million pages and course corrected its reliance on print device numbers by 90%.
“NHS Fife was consistently challenged with improving its healthcare information sharing between clinicians while tackling increasing costs, waste and a growing lack of control over print resources. With a focused digital transformation initiative and partner in Ricoh, the healthcare authority was able to see a clear impact and improved operations.”
The new EIU study, entitled The Challenge of Speed , examines the challenges of enhancing business agility and what steps organisations should take to be faster. Healthcare, leaders from hospitals, medical device manufacturers and pharmaceuticals, were surveyed.
To read the research in full, click here.
