Sumeet Mathur, Vice President & Managing Director, ServiceNow India Technology & Business Center in interaction with Kalyani Sharma talks about the role of Clinical Device Management (CDM) in maximising the life of devices, such as MRI and X ray machines. He also shares his views on the use of automation in healthcare settings
What specific digital transformation benefits ServiceNow’s Clinical Device Management (CDM) solution offer to healthcare organisations?
To meet the most challenging needs, our healthcare systems must have digital systems that support the delivery of care. The health sector is mission critical and one of the fastest growing in the country, a key service for our nation-not to mention a core source of National employment. ServiceNow saw the need to deliver tailored automation solutions to support the healthcare sector and released new solutions in the Now platform Vancouver release this year. Clinical Device Management (CDM) is one significant innovation that simplifies how healthcare providers install, service, manage, and maximise the life of devices, such as MRI and X ray machines. CDM automates the upkeep and management of these devices, guides staff on ordering parts, and identifies the best technicians for device maintenance, leading to improved patient safety and care. With preventive maintenance and timely actions, healthcare providers can save on maintenance expenses related to critical, costly devices. It is estimated that with these workflow solutions, the healthcare sector can automate up large workloads and manual process, freeing up thousands of hours of human productivity and diverting them towards patient care effectively.
Can you elaborate on the critical reasons why data security should be a primary concern for healthcare organisations in today’s digital landscape?
Healthcare ranks among the most vulnerable sectors for sophisticated cyber threats in India. From system intrusions, data breaches, denial-of-service attacks, to insider threats, ransomware attacks – the myriad nature of the attacks continue to evolve. Outdated software, legacy systems, and insufficient cybersecurity investments are some of the major reasons threatening the security landscape of the healthcare sector. Cyber-attacks not only set back progress, but also negatively impact a company’s reputation and profitability.
The use of automation in healthcare is becoming increasingly prevalent. Could you provide insights into how it is driving productivity and efficiency for healthcare workers? What are some tangible outcomes of this automation in healthcare settings?
A recent ServiceNow and Pearson research highlighted that 16.2 million professionals in tech and non-tech roles will be transformed through AI and automation. Globally, health and social care has emerged as among the top 5 sectors that will face significant talent transformation, in the study. AI is fundamentally transforming the very nature of how organisations operate, prompting a significant shift in human potential as well. Automated, digitised workflows are emerging as a critical necessity to overcome challenges such as staff shortage, data management and security, legacy and disjointed workflows etc. Automation can take over manual, repetitive administrative tasks, which will help reduce the workload of healthcare workers, thus helping boost productivity. A truly, integrated digital workflow in healthcare unifies service delivery and streamlines services and data from disparate silos, leverages data to enable real-time hospital systems, improves staff, patient and clinician experiences, enhances cost efficiency and drives innovation, and enables new revenue streams.
What are the common challenges and pain points that healthcare organisations face when it comes to managing clinical devices, and how does CDM address these challenges to support digital transformation?
According to our customer groups in the healthcare industry, device management ranks among the top 2 cost drivers for hospital systems. Connected medical devices represent one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the Internet of Things (IoT). From heart monitors to fitness trackers, connected gadgets are assisting healthcare practitioners in improving services and patients in being more proactive and educated about their health. However, quality control, product recall, regulatory compliance and vulnerability to cyber – attacks are few of the challenges faced by healthcare organisations while managing clinical devices. ServiceNow’s CDM solution helps achieve compliance requirements by centralising visibility and data across all devices (online or offline) and locations or sites into a single source of truth. It has also been estimated that 45-60 mins are spent per shift by nurses trying to find the right equipment! Our CDM solution is designed to drive productivity by managing devices across multiple hospitals, sites, or enterprises, improves clinician satisfaction, reduces device downtime with streamlined issue reports and response workflows. Thus, it proves to be a holistic solution that not only manages medical device-related in-service process and alternative equipment maintenance (AEM) review process but also medical device issues as well as out-of-service process.
As data breaches and cyber threats continue to rise, could you share some best practices or strategies that healthcare players should adopt to prioritise data security?
According to a recent report nearly 60 per cent of healthcare organisations in India have suffered a cyberattack in the past 12 months. It’s important to invest in latest, state-of-the-art security strategies for pre-emptive action rather than course-correction later. ServiceNow has introduced significant strategies to enable healthcare organisations to safeguard their data privacy. The Now Platform enables organisations to streamline incident identification and management with intelligent automation, offers an enterprise wide view into critical risks including vulnerabilities, issues and outages, and helps protect confidential data with native platform encryption, all on a single platform. ServiceNow Zero Trust Access helps customers to build a zero trust framework with granular authentication policies. By safeguarding the type of access available to a user in a session based on various risk parameters like location, network, user risk, and devices, organisations can expand their network of authorised ServiceNow users, while also protecting customer and proprietary data. Third Party Risk Management gives organisations a single source of truth to easily visualise risk from third party applications, at scale, for a more holistic, streamlined approach to risk management. New innovations such as automated inherent risk questionnaires and out of the box due diligence workflows drive greater response time and IT team productivity, as well as enhanced executive reporting for improved board level visibility and organisational agility.
KALYANI SHARMA
kalyani.sharma@expressindia.com
journokalyani@gmail.com