By Uday Shankar Kizhepat
Prior to 2020, the Middle East’s healthcare sector was looking at ways to improve its processes. Progress was steady, though perhaps not exceptional. But that all changed when the pandemic forced a rapid and sweeping evolution. Suddenly facing a systemic threat, providers had to revisit the patient experience.
Virtual consultation is an excellent example of how healthcare providers have since used digital tools to take the strain off resources. Initially seen as a means of keeping all but the most critical cases away from hospitals and clinics, telemedicine proved itself to be more cost-effective and a boon to the patient experience. It even had the potential of driving down medical insurance premiums if telemedicine managed to also bring greater efficiency to triage. In the UAE alone, the telemedicine segment could be worth more than US$536 million by 2025 if its observed CAGR of 25% from 2020 continues. Virtual consultation alone topped US$73 million in 2020, at the height of the crisis. But because telemedicine proved itself such a benefit to providers and customers, it could reach almost US$281 million by the end of the five-year period – a CAGR of more than 30%.
And yet, besides telemedicine, more can be done to improve the patient experience. The healthcare industry has never been out in front when it comes to the personalisation of treatment. The absence of interoperability between providers is one stumbling block. Reluctance (albeit understandable, given regulators’ positions) to share patient data is another. But to move with the times, healthcare entities must learn from retailers and hotels. They must come up with ways to track customers across networks and engagements. Quality of care and treatment outcome are both reliant on the extent to which we have managed to implement “Patient 360”. Longitudinal monitoring and effective real-time decision-making both require the preservation, evolution, and easy access of the patient record.
Customer identity and access management
The solution to the problem is now widely considered to be customer identity and access management (CIAM), where the patient is modelled as a single digital entity that is readily recognisable across digital ecosystems. If enough buy-in occurs and CIAM becomes a standard, all businesses – hospitals, outpatient clinics, pharmacies, and so on – that deal with the patient will be able to offer them consistent, individualized care. Meanwhile, some of the cybersecurity industry’s most robust methods are brought to bear on keeping personal medical records safe. All stakeholders – physicians, diagnostic technicians, billing staff, pharmacists, and others – would be users of CIAM, but everything is controlled by the patient.
Some of the core deliverables of CIAM are single sign-on (SSO), multifactor authentication (MFA), and step-up authentication, where assets are tiered according to their sensitivity and more sensitive resources trigger requests for further credentials. Through SSO, patients can access their healthcare information at any time, from anywhere, on any device, all while being supported by stringent security standards. B2C CIAM provides portal services for members and patients that include the most popular platforms of the day. This is a true omni-channel experience. And patients own their data completely, granting access to third parties through their own dashboard.
Quicker approvals and shorter waiting times
If CIAM became a standard, healthcare organisations would collaborate with one another to enhance the patient experience. In such a scenario, with the patient’s permission, greater information flow would be possible between, say, a pharmacy and an insurance provider. This would allow for quicker approvals and shorter waiting times. Because CIAM delivers privacy compliance out of the box, information sharing becomes viable, leading to the streamlining of partner onboarding and offboarding. In the B2B use case, role-based access further ensures the integrity of the process by delivering on confidentiality pledges implicitly made to patients by various business entities. CIAM adheres to predefined policies to deliver to each participant only the data and systems they need to function smoothly.
Any enterprise that is part of the integrated delivery network (IDN) and is signed up to the CIAM platform would be able to recognise and authenticate a patient who had previous dealings with other entities in the same IDN. Once this B2B use case becomes commonplace, third-party technology providers can provide richer solutions that enhance the patient experience wherever treatment occurs.
Helping frontline caregivers
CIAM is also of enormous benefit to frontline caregivers and technicians in a business-to-employee (B2E) use case. Access to data and applications is cleaner with CIAM. Pressured doctors, nurses, or diagnosticians benefit greatly from SSO, and role-governed access ensures they can only work with data if they have explicit permission. Smart cards, tokens, or mobile apps can slicken the process further, ensuring that at critical moments, carers do not have to remember multiple passwords. For the provider, therefore, efficiency and regulatory compliance are both boosted by CIAM.
Patient 360
Although most have never heard the term, patients expect “Patient 360” just like consumers expect to be treated like individuals with the discounts and deals that fit their lifestyle. When it comes to medical care, it does not require a leap of intuition to see that individualization is even more critical. Through CIAM, care, treatment outcomes, and patient experience are all enhanced. The “digital patient double” is the quintessentially digital requirement in a quintessentially digital age.
About the author
Uday Shankar Kizhepat is the Vice President and General Manager – Middle East, at the software company, WSO2.
