Healthcare | The TIBCO Blog

Top Three Things Healthcare Can Learn from Other Industries

April 27, 2013 by Kevin Jordan Leave a Comment

Only a decade ago, India and China fully opened their societies to the West. Instead of telephone poles and landlines, Asian companies met 21st-century challenges head-on by skipping investing in outdated infrastructure for moving directly to smart phones and deploying mobile apps. A parallel can be drawn with the healthcare industry. Let’s leapfrog to 21st-century information technology solutions and stop trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s outdated technology.

The three broad areas healthcare needs to focus on include re-framing conversations, improving processes, and leveraging technology. These three areas are interconnected; it would be impossible to fully innovate in one without the other two. The processes have been proven in other industries, the technology is available to healthcare, and the industry has the power to innovate like never before. Learn how to transform the healthcare industry with 21st-century solutions at our HITP conference May 6-8. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Financial Services, Healthcare, Integration, Transportation and Logistics Tagged With: airlines, banking, financial services, Healthcare, integrated supply-chain, turning customers into fans

Is the Healthcare Industry Beyond Saving?

January 16, 2013 by Kenan Frager 1 Comment

Everyone seems to agree that the current US healthcare system is broken, or at least needs serious overhaul. Healthcare has been an ongoing national debate with both sides agreeing on the many problems (although not the solution), and everyone has their own personal tale of healthcare falling short.

Many of healthcare’s systemic problems come from being overwhelmed by big data, too many systems recording too much diverse data and not actively working together. If a healthcare organization’s billing doesn’t connect with patient discharge, treatment tracking or a customer web portal there are bound to be problems. Mistaking a patient’s gender seems like a small problem, but can reflect a systemic lack of connected data that can and does lead to faulty billing, misdiagnosis, bad overall care, and unrealized revenue for the business. Enter Siemens Healthcare, whose job is to fix the healthcare industry through technology solutions, services, and consulting. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, Industries, Integration Tagged With: Big Data, care, event driven healthcare, health, Healthcare, healthcare issues, healthcare problems, healthcare reform, integration, interoperability, patients, Siemens Healthcare

Integration is Integral to 21st-Century Healthcare

January 15, 2013 by Doug Evans 3 Comments

The most progressive healthcare organizations are implementing a new vision – using information and events occurring in the course of care to recognize trends and patterns, and to act upon them immediately. They are able to influence outcomes rather than to react to them after they occur. It’s what we call Event-Driven Healthcare. But none of this is possible without the cornerstone of integration and interoperability.

Integration is Job One

The importance of integration in healthcare is nothing new. Dr. David J. Brailer, MD, PhD, a former United States public health official, perhaps best known as the first “health information czar”, summarized it this way in 2004:

“Unless interoperability is achieved, physicians will still defer IT investments, potential clinical and economic benefits won’t be realized, and we will not move closer to badly needed healthcare reform in the US.”

Some healthcare organizations are clearly at the forefront of this sea change. Take for example University of Chicago Medicine or Vanderbilt University Medical Center which are advancing the way clinical decision support is used for improving outcomes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, Industries, Integration Tagged With: care, event driven healthcare, health, Healthcare, healthcare issues, healthcare problems, healthcare reform, integration, interoperability

Why Should You Care About Healthcare?

January 14, 2013 by Kevin Jordan 2 Comments

45.7 million people in America do not have health insurance. 16 million people are under-insured and do not have adequate protection. $768 is the amount an average family of four falls short in having to pay for healthcare premiums each year with an annual minimum wage salary. $8,233 is how much the American government spends on healthcare for each person every year.

Healthcare is widely discussed and debated all over the world, but for good reason. I will admit that healthcare issues were not always at the forefront of my mind. However, when I saw the numbers and realized what could be improved upon, that is when I knew that caring about healthcare was in everyone’s best interest. One day I will go to the doctor for something – my annual check-up if I am diligent – and realize that something I had not entirely appreciated before is actually essential. “I do not need any medical work done, so what do I care?” The next thought that I had was, “Should I care?”

Do a simple Google search for any news story related to healthcare and the word reform is sure to follow. In general, healthcare reform is just means to change health policy with the hopes to improve the quality of the system in place. Reform is synonymous with change, but it also has the connotation that the change will be for the greater good, to make something better or fix a problem. In order to develop a solution, the problem needs to be identified, so let us reexamine the numbers. [Read more...]

Filed Under: general, Healthcare Tagged With: america, americans, data, Healthcare, healthcare issues, healthcare policy, healthcare reform, policy

The Nexus of Healthcare Forces

December 19, 2012 by Chris Taylor Leave a Comment

We’re undergoing a revolution in healthcare that started with the American Recovery Act in 2009. Good things can come from bad things, and near economic collapse gave us a reason to invest. The Act funded the switchover from paper to digital record-keeping and amazingly, there was quite a bit of resistance at first. Someday we’ll look back at the arguments against digitization and chuckle. But now that we’re under way, other exciting things are more than possible, they’re happening.

Nexus of healthcare forces

Just as Gartner talks about the Nexus of Forces - cloud, social, mobile and information – healthcare is experiencing its own “nexus” that includes a surge in mobile devices, the aforementioned rapid digitization, big data coming from people, their devices and sensors, real-time analytics and business events. Each is remarkable by itself, but together they are changing healthcare.

Healthcare on the move

Mobile devices are already providing healthcare solutions through things as simple as apps on iPhones that can provide ECG readings in the moment and over time (a historical record). This trend will continue as more apps, devices, and sensors are implemented, with the downside being lots more strain on existing infrastructure. Doctors are using tablets, patients are using apps, and everyone expects access to be readily available. They expect IT to resolve the security issues as quickly as they come up. Governance, security and easy provisioning are an expectation for someone else to resolve.

IT needs help figuring mobility out. Serious help. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, Mobility, Tech Trends Tagged With: Healthcare

What Can’t You Do Without? TIBCO: The Easy Button For Business

November 14, 2012 by Kevin Jordan Leave a Comment

What things can’t you do without? Other than the necessities, what is important to your everyday life? Some people would say television, Internet, an iPod, or their cell phone. In today’s world, we all have certain things that we use daily to make our lives easier. Many of the things that we value so much today did not even exist 50 years ago, but that is the power of innovation. We have new tools to handle our problems more quickly and make life easier. In many ways, technology has become the easy button for life. Just as much as we often look for an easy button in our daily lives, companies sometimes need an easy button for business.

Founded in 1939, Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company is a market leader in providing benefit solutions to customers. They pride themselves in excellence in communications, enrollments, service, and services that can help employers and employees. Colonial Life is a leading national provider of voluntary benefits to over 70,000 companies faced the challenge of a large volume of paperwork, modifying payment methods, altering billing frequencies, and other workflow issues. At Colonial Life, there was no easy button to prioritize work in their manual environment. That is, there was no easy button until Colonial Life turned to TIBCO. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Automation, Healthcare Tagged With: colonial life, easy button, health, Innovation, innovation series, insurance, paperwork, Real Time, storm, TIBCO

TUCON 2012 Kicks Off: Everything Really IS Different

September 25, 2012 by Chris Taylor 1 Comment

TIBCO’s TUCON 2012 kicked off this morning with the theme, “Everything is Different.” From the start, the areas of Digital Customer Experience Management, Big Data, Social and Consumerization took center stage, beginning with the opening address by TIBCO founder and CEO Vivek Ranadivé.

While You Were Sleeping

Vivek talked about how to make the worst of times into the best of times, a reprise of his video discussion found on Forbes. He drew parallels with Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” opening words: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” This was a great description of where business finds itself today. The key to thriving in these times is to deliver extreme value and to reinvent yourself and your enterprise for the 21st century, he told the packed event.

Chief Marketing Officer Raj Verma

Chief Marketing Officer Raj Verma continued with the TIBCO vision that establishes customer experience management as a critical business imperative for every company on the planet. He talked about the switch from analog to digital marketing and what that means to the modern enterprise.

Raj took the audience through the significant expansion of the digital customer experience, from the fact that iPhone sales outpaced the growth of the human population, that 4.7 billion minutes were spent on Facebook and that 22 million hours of video were streamed on Netflix, all while we slept last night.

Before leaving the stage, Raj laid out the TIBCO two-second advantage™, the ultimate goal of his event-enabled customer, delivered through automation, events, analytics, cloud and social. He described the TIBCO platform as tightly integrated and loosely coupled… a big advantage for organizations trying to find the right partner to excel during these times. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Loyalty, Mobility, Retail, Social, Tech Trends, Transform, Two-Second Advantage Tagged With: Big Data, Consumerization, Digital Customer Experience Management, Matt Quinn, Raj Verma, social, TUCON, Vivek Ranadivé

Dana-Farber Nominates Spotfire as Running Mate in Election for Best Cancer Research

September 12, 2012 by Kevin Jordan Leave a Comment

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. healthcare system wastes over $750 billion a year, which is almost 30 cents of every dollar you spend for medical purposes. How is this wasteful spending happening? We are spending money on unneeded care, paperwork, fraud, and other waste. In light of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, both President Barack Obama and Republican Nominee Mitt Romney accuse each other of cutting back on Medicare, which will put many people’s lives at risk. No matter your politics, no matter if you are for Obamacare or Romneycare, healthcare is an important issue that some companies do not take lightly. With cancer being the leading cause of death worldwide, some institutions are helping to make sure waste is minimized and answers to our health-related questions are found. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States.

It does not take a political party platform to realize healthcare is an important issue in America. A recent report from an 18-member panel of experts, doctors, business people, and public officials acknowledges the great biomedical knowledge and innovation in medical procedures. However, American healthcare does not live up to expectations in terms of outcomes, costs, and equity. What can be done? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics and Optimization, Healthcare, Industries, Spotfire, Transform Tagged With: cancer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, election, Healthcare, innovation series, medical, president, research, Spotfire, TIBCO

Loyalty Program Gives Nationwide Pharmacy a Makeover to the Tune of a 9.3% Increase in Sales

June 27, 2012 by Amitava Kundu 1 Comment

The U.S. market for health and wellness products is growing at a rapid pace and is expected to reach $170 billion by the end of 2012. Companies competing in this space will strive to boost consumer spend at each visit by providing a one-stop store for all their needs – pharmacy services, OTC medicines, homeopathic, beauty, and personal care products. To maximize customer spend while also promoting repeat shopping, companies in this space desperately need to have loyalty programs that cover all their touch points with the customer.

When Pharmaca, a pharmacy that looks to revolutionize the way we shop for health and wellness products, embarked on a loyalty initiative, one of the company’s goals was to reinforce its branding as a go-to wellness destination to drive higher engagement between pharmacy and retail. They sought to encourage customers to fill both their conventional prescriptions needs and their need for alternative products in one location. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, Loyalty, Retail Tagged With: cross-sell, health and wellness, innovation series, loyalty, Loyalty Lab, loyalty program, pharmaca, pharmacy

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