Without investing
in the social aspect especially trust, benefits of IT in healthcare cannot be
fully reaped, say two IBM healthcare executives.
Dr Martin Sepulveda, vice president of health industries research at
IBM, noted that the two types of information people were least comfortable with
others knowing were financial data and medical data. He cited results from an
IBM-commissioned study published last year.
So, whether healthcare IT adoption increases ultimately "goes back
to the trust issue", he said in an interview Thursday with ZDNet Asia. Dr
Sepulveda was in Singapore to speak at The Economist Healthcare in Asia 2012
conference.
Invest in people,
processes and technology
Hence, he emphasized that besides technology, there needs to be effort
made in investing in "people and process".
"Anytime you talk about transformation, you must address all three
things for transformation to be successful", Dr Sepulveda said, likening
it to a pyramid--where at the top section is people, followed by both process
and technology at the second level, and underneath that, culture.
Culture is "really important" in healthcare IT because
culture is the foundation upon which beliefs, perceptions and behavior are
built, which influence how people react to--or reject--the shifts created by
healthcare IT, he noted.
For instance, with a national health record system, some people may
have privacy concerns over their medical records being possibly accessed by
doctors other than their own, so the healthcare community and the government
need to educate the public on the benefits of a national database and that
one's data will be protected, said Farhana Nakhooda, solutions executive for
healthcare and life sciences, growth markets unit at IBM, at the same
interview.
Healthcare IT is "not a technology issue at all [but] a people
issue", she said, highlighting the importance of trust.
"[Building customer trust] has been done in banking forever, and
financial data is just as precious to people as their medical data," she
said. "So it's more an awareness and the confidence of the public that
[their medical] data is as secure as it would be in a bank."
The healthcare industry has generally been a "laggard in IT
adoption" as compared to others such as banking and finance, precisely
because it is about the "delivery of care and the human touch",
Nakhooda said, which is why social aspects have to be accounted for before
healthcare IT can go one step further.
Neglecting the social element can hinder adoption of healthcare IT, she
added.
"That's a typical issue with IT, generally. If you think IT alone
will fix the problem and ignore the people and the way people think and work,
you will always struggle and you're never going to get results. You could build
the most amazing healthcare IT system in the world but no one uses it."
Asia primed for
healthcare IT advancements
According to Dr Sepulveda, the healthcare industry in Asia-Pacific has
witnessed "quantum changes" brought about by technology within the
last decade. With that, the region's healthcare industry is able to
"leapfrog lots of evolutionary phases" that those in Western countries
had to go through, such as legacy systems which are "enormous drags on
everything".
"Asia has the ability to use wireless and mobile technology, and
it's in a better position to use cloud technology than in other parts of the
world," he said.
At the same time, the spread of the Internet through digital devices,
particularly mobile phones, in the region has also expanded availability and
access to Web-based medical information, Dr Sepulveda pointed out.
Considering that mobile phone penetration was high in both the developing
and developed economies in Asia, the benefits of mobile healthcare were not
exclusive to either market, he added. Citing "Text 4 Baby", a mobile
messaging information service in the U.S. designed to help expectant women
among low-income demographics, he said the model of providing usable and
practical health information via phone messages is one that can be replicated
in Asia.
Finally, Dr Sepulveda observed that there was much more openness and
willingness in Asia to use new technologies to provide and access healthcare.
"[This is] great, because new technologies have advantages over old
technologies, and if you don't use them, then you don't get the benefits."
Jamie Yap
ZDNet Asia
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