Amazon’s HealthLake Helps Chicago Hospital Tear Down Data Silos
Amazon’s HealthLake software has helped the Rush University Medical Center tear down data silos and build a coherent patient history across their entire organization. This makes it easier to share information between departments and provides healthcare professionals with more accurate information, meaning they can spend less time looking up patients’ records and more time providing care. The hospital has also been able to save money because it no longer needs to subscribe to separate health records systems like Cerner and McKesson, reducing its IT expenditure by 90%. Read on to learn how Rush is using HealthLake and why you should consider it too!
To do more, we need better access to our data
The American health care system is broken. In the US, we spend more than $3 trillion a year on health care. But every dollar spent means less access to lifesaving treatments and technology for patients in developing countries. Costs continue to spiral out of control and impact people’s lives in ways most Americans don’t see or experience. I know this firsthand because I work at a hospital in one of America’s poorest neighbourhoods. Patients come to us with incomplete medical records; often our best chance at understanding their diagnosis is by searching for information on Google or speaking with their relatives about what they might have been told by other doctors.
How HealthLake helps us solve this problem
Health data should be accessible to the right people at the right time. This allows them to take timely and informed decisions that result in better outcomes for patients. As they need to collect, store, share and analyze more data than ever before – new approaches are needed. Introducing HealthLake: a fully managed, secure cloud service that scales elastically with your needs.
Next steps for blockchain in healthcare
Blockchain has immense potential to change the way we store and manage healthcare data, making it significantly more secure. Microsoft is at the forefront of this with their Azure cloud service that can store sensitive medical records in a fully encrypted blockchain. Of course, such advancement will take some time to fully implement. With blockchain becoming an ever-growing part of technology and business, there are bound to be opportunities for more use cases and more research in the coming years.
Why more hospitals should be looking at blockchain today
By integrating Amazon’s HealthLake, which offers blockchain-powered data storage, with MEDITECH, a leading provider of electronic health records (EHR), Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center has increased efficiency by eliminating the need for staff to manually upload patient data. Amazon’s HealthLake is a platform that could be beneficial to any hospital looking to store and secure their patient data in one place.
This makes it easier to share information between departments and provides healthcare professionals with more accurate information, meaning they can spend less time looking up patients’ records and more time providing care. The hospital has also been able to save money because it no longer needs to subscribe to separate health records systems like Cerner and McKesson, reducing their IT expenditure by 90%. Read on to learn how Rush is using HealthLake and why you should consider it too!
