Improving Healthcare Processes with Communications-Enabled Applications

Hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, insurance companies and other businesses in the healthcare industry face a daunting challenge today: improving the quality of patient care while reducing operational expenditures. With healthcare costs continuing to rise faster than the inflation rate, the industry is constantly under pressure to provide cost-effective and affordable personalized medical care for a diverse patient population.

Cutting costs must not involve cutting corners, however. Rather, healthcare providers must look for ways to improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness, enhance overall productivity and minimize errors. Communications-enabling business processes is one area that holds tremendous promise for streamlining information flow and supplying critical patient data to the right person. For example, many hospitals have deployed wireless LANs to provide voice and data communications for the staff, enabling mobile medical professionals to use hands-free voice badges for communicating with associates at any time from any place.

Enhancements to information technology and communications must also be sensitive to another challenge facing the healthcare industry: the need for security to protect patient privacy. Most countries currently impose special regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States, that require strict confidentiality for personally identifiable healthcare information.

Communications-Enabled Healthcare Solutions

Leading organizations throughout the healthcare industry are looking to SessionSuite® from BlueNote Networks to help improve operational efficiency and effectiveness by integrating secure voice and other IP multimedia communication services into existing application infrastructures. With SessionSuite, healthcare organizations can deliver compelling new interactive Web services applications, reduce communications expenditures, and enhance staff productivity, which together can improve the quality of patient care and increase patient satisfaction.

To read our Healthcare application note, click here.