Healthcare

Leading the way in healthcare IT

By Jianggan Li | 3 February 2008

Alan Payne, Chief Information Officer of health solutions provider Healthe, explains how IT is transforming Australia’s largest private hospital network.

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Healthe, headquartered in Singapore, was founded in 2002 to provide health services and solutions. The company operates the largest privately owned hospital network in Australia comprising nine key hospitals, three occupational health and rehabilitation consultancies and an online health and wellness portal.

The company also provides healthcare and wellness services for athletes. It has been a major supplier to the Australian Olympic Committee since Athens Olympics in 2004, through services that include its Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system which is electronically linked to the World Anti Doping Authority (WADA).

“Over the past one or two decades, here have been quite profound changes in terms of information management for the healthcare industry,” says Alan Payne, CIO of Healthe group. “What healthcare IT is at now is probably what banking sector was 10 years ago.”

Payne says that the overall IT infrastructure in Asia’s healthcare sector is still very poor.

Healthe maintains a substantial in-house software division looking at how to use technology “as change agent for hospital operations”. Payne believes that most healthcare service providers have yet to tap the potential of IT.

The financial and accounting suite Healthe implemented has shortened the close cycle in its hospitals from 10 days to five days. “Now we can get the information significantly faster with lower software costs,” says Payne. He believes information technology has significant improved the business of the group.

Healthe has deployed a system that enables people to gain pre-admission to hospitals via the internet. An online personal health management system has also been implemented to enable Healthe’s customers to ‘consume healthcare products and services, like what people are doing with internet banking’.

As a continent itself, Australia has communities scattered across its 7.74 million square kilometre territory. Servicing customers in remote areas has therefore become a very expensive endeavour for Healthe. Payne says the costs are most likely soft costs – including delivery of healthcare services on the ground.

“To syndicate the risk associated with cost of delivery, we are again looking at technology as a solution,” explains Payne. Healthe provides its clients with mobile monitor, which is a touchscreen PC that can generate an electrocardiogram. The device is used to screen critical health indicators such as body mass and blood sugar.

“Cost of providing a mobile monitor is less than ten dollars a day, but this allows us to monitor remotely, intercept the data collected and intervene whenever it is necessary,” Payne explains the benefit of this device. “Compare the monitor to the cost of sending nurses, which is typically around US$ 100 per hour.”

“We get huge economies of scale through information technology,” Payne reveals. “A very robust network across our hospital group allows us to achieve that.”

By consolidating its network operations, Healthe seeks to improve its overall network performance, as well as develop a platform for future business-critical applications and advanced IP communications tools.

Payne says: “A secure and reliable health care-centric network infrastructure is absolutely critical for us as we continue to link multiple health care applications around the world.”

The system now can be scaled to support 1 million-plus users. In addition, with the network fully managed by a vendor, Payne believes that his team can focus on their customers rather than on building a network.

Healthe’s priority with network is ‘real time data’ – the ability to ‘retrieve and extract any information quickly from large data storage to ensure rapid and efficient response’. According to Payne, this has already been achieved.

“As human beings, we crave immediate satisfaction,” he reveals. “We want to make decision immediately in one single environment without knowing where the physical data actually resides.” Healthe’s disaster recovery and contingency plans, including off site recovery facilities in San Jose, California, ensure that the system is still up and running even if one-thirds of the blades fail.

“In today’s environment, software and services are principle for CIOs,” concludes Payne. “While major shift is yet to fully emerge in the industry, we are leading the way.”

Healthe is implementing a global voice and data network to link its Singapore headquarters with its primary business locations across the globe. Under the three year contract, Verizon Business will provide a fully managed Private IP network, along with data centre colocation and managed security services.