Governments across the
global are faced with the challenge of providing effective healthcare delivery
system to its citizens. The recent past mark given to Nigeria by the World
Health Organisation, WHO, over its defeat of the dread Ebola virus indicates
the need for governments to adopt proactive measures. Country Director,
Oracle Nigeria, Adebayo Sanni in this interview shared his thought on how government can apply technology
to deliver effective healthcare in the 21st century.
Country Managing Director, Oracle, Nigeria
Responsible for managing channel
partners across all of Sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of South Africa
Graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University in
1987-1996
Awarded the Cisco- Best Regional
Sales/Channel Manager for Middle East Africa, 2000
Birthday is July 3
What is trending now between
health and technology?
The global healthcare industry is
under constant pressure to provide more and better access to care, while
managing ever-increasing demands and costs. Even advanced countries with long
histories of universal healthcare are reeling under the pressure of increasing
populations, especially amongst the aged who expect quality healthcare
irrespective of the financial, technical and human resource pressures on
national health systems.
Countries like Nigeria that are
looking at ways to implement a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) that
will ultimately provide cover for the whole population, are also faced with a
difficult task. How can a country with only about 3% of its population benefiting
from health cover currently, develop and grow its NHIS effectively to include
more citizens.
This is an enormous task. Even the
proposed first step of extending health cover to 30% of the population by 2015
requires careful planning to ensure the roll-out is successful and that it
creates a solid foundation for future expansion.
Over the past few years we have
seen an increase in investments into electronic healthcare technologies, which
hold the promise of improving care and ensuring better outcomes, irrespective
of the setting. We are moving from an episodic-based system to a longitudinal
system that delivers continuous value.”
Does technology has the answer to
healthcare solution?
The optimal use of technology in
healthcare will allow caregivers to deal with any person, at any time, more
effectively than ever before. Healthcare in the 21st century is far more than
simply treating a specific condition or symptom; effective healthcare today
means treating the whole person across a multitude of care settings and
conditions. Achieving this ideal is only possible with a reliable, integrated
healthcare system.
The question for any operation
looking at healthcare provision, whether in a single home or across a vast
country, is whether the process starts with the appropriate technology matching
the right technology road-map. When planned and implemented correctly, this will empower
healthcare organizations to meet their immediate challenges, while providing a
solid foundation to build on for the future.
So what is the right technological
approach?
The process through, which
organizations approach building their technical healthcare solution varies.
Many have taken a tactical approach, purchasing point solutions to tackle each
challenge or implementing a service-intensive technology designed to deal with
a particular problem, and then building on it as time and budgets permit.
Unfortunately, this approach is likely to cause more problems than it solves.
Tackling each challenge with a
separate product can lead to integration problems in the future that lead to a
more complex environment that is much more difficult to support. Far from
containing costs, this scenario can potentially drive up the cost of delivering
healthcare as well as create new risks and potential safety issues. Many point
solutions are just not built for addressing the challenges of integration, data
consolidation and operational efficiency. Moreover, because they are designed
to solve a single problem, most cannot assist with integration challenges, they
only make it more difficult.
To take advantage of the
incredible innovation in progress in healthcare information technology today, it is critical for organizations to look to a strategic
partner that can provide vertical solutions as well as deep integration with
underlying technology and mission-critical applications. Ultimately, this
delivers a platform that delivers today’s requirements and will meet future
growth demands, irrespective of the direction healthcare takes.
What has Oracle been doing?
Oracle is the global leader in
connected healthcare solutions. It delivers strategic capabilities, such as the
secure exchange of health records that complies with regulations. More
importantly, it also delivers meaningful benefits to the end user – the
patient.
Our connected health solutions
provide accurate healthcare of information when and where it’s needed and we
assist in improving customer engagement, continuity of care as well as
long-term care capabilities from different service providers. Additionally, Oracle
does this while providing the ability to seamlessly integrate new and exciting
technologies such as tele-health and remote medical devices into the solution.
Technology is obviously not the
only issue that needs to be addressed when contemplating a national health
system such as the NHIS. However, the right technology provides the starting
point for all that is possible in healthcare. In the past, there has always
been a disconnect between the patient, payer and provider. Today, technology is
giving us better ways to enable collaboration and ensure service providers are
able to deliver quality care on a long-term basis.
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