From EHR to UDHPS (Unified Digital Health Platform) – Section 1 – Health Care Blog

Vince Kuraitis, Girish Muralidharan and Jody Ranck

This entry is part 3 of the series Platform Healthcare – Long-lasting Vision. This article is the next article in the series titled “Platform Health Care – Long-term View”. The series provides a 30-year framework for platform healthcare. As shown below, the updated v2.0 depicts the 30-year framework's graph as shown below.

This entry is part 3 of the series Platform Healthcare – Long-lasting Vision. This article is the next article in the series titled “Platform Health Care – Long-term View”. The series provides a 30-year framework for platform healthcare. The updated v2.0 depicts the graphics for this 30-year framework is shown above.

Today’s post will describe and discuss the potential successor to the EHR era – the Unified Digital Health Platform (UDHPS). Here is an overview:

• Background and environmental trends
• Gartner's key role in characterizing UDHP motion
• UDHP value proposition
• Examples of UDHPS

Later this week, THCB will run a second part, which includes an analysis of the Mayo Clinic platform.

Healthcare is decentralized. The data is not standardized and exists in silos. The patient and the clinician have been disconnected from the experience. Payment structures create conflicting incentives.

Electronic Health Records (EHRS) has been touted as a key solution to transform healthcare into a modern, digital industry. However, they continue to frustrate clinicians with poor UI/UX and play a major role as a record system for recording claims filings.

Recent technology and business trends have begun to transform healthcare into a more unified and integrated experience:

• HITECH (in the United States) drives electronic health records across the industry
• Standard-compliant data models and APIs for various solutions allow third-party integration to add new features
• Value-based care (VBC) and value-based payment (VBP) models incentivize quality improvement rather than maximizing the amount of services provided by the expense
• The emergence and adoption of AI in healthcare has prompted people to need more, better data and data mobility.
• New competitors of healthcare (large technology, big retail, digital health enterprises) are based on improving patient experience, advancing competition for VBC and VBP models and integrated data and analytics
• Accessible cloud computing infrastructure is implementing a large number of ** – AS-A-Service Business Model

Healthcare organizations need integrated solutions, not more solutions. See the previous blog post in this series: “Beyond Awareness: Understanding the Size of Fatigue in the Midpoint Solutions for Healthcare.”

The trends and forces listed above open the door and create a new category of enterprise software – Unified Digital Health Platform (UDHPS).

The December 2022 Gartner Market Guide Report characterizes long-term potential:

DHP transfer will be the most cost-effective, technically effective approach to expanding digital capabilities within and within the health ecosystem and will replace the main era of single-layer electronic health record (EHR) over time.

Although Gartner uses the term “Digital Health Platform (DHP), we use the term “Uniform Digital Health Platform” because 1) it describes the architecture and its functionality more, and 2) it distinguishes itself from thousands of other digital health platforms, which are very powerful.

The DHP reference architecture is illustrated in Better's blog post. Note that UDHP is described as “Sit on the Top” and other isolated sources of health data for EHR:

Gartner continues to update its market reports on UDHP. The April 2024 update titled: “Innovation Insights: Digital Health Platform Accelerates Transformation.” As of the date of posting this blog post, Altera will provide a free copy of Gartner's 2024 UDHP report.

This blog post aims to focus more on UDHP's business and strategic impact. We strongly recommend reading Gartner's April 2024 report on UDHP for a more technical perspective.

Gartner also provides a list of UDHP updates (but not exhaustive):

• Amazon Web Services AWS HealthLake
• Better platform better
• Drcloud EHR by ensoftek
• Avidon Health's Engagement RX
• GE Healthcare's Edison Intelligence Platform
• Google Google Cloud Healthcare Data Engine
• IBM Health Insights and IBM Watson Clinical Data Annotations IBM
• Healthshare and Systems Iris for Health by Systems
• Kyruus Connect by Kyruus Health
• Microsoft Cloud for Microsoft
• Miya precisely through Alcidion
• Philips Healthsuite Digital Platform
• SAS Health
• ServiceNow Healthcare and Life Sciences Service Management

We will add our candidates to the list:

• Epic EMR
• Vitagroup's Health Intelligent Platform
• Innovacer Health Cloud by Innovacer
• Nttdata's medical nuclear
• Oracle Oracle Health EHR
• Salesforce Health Cloud by Salesforce
• SAP's SAP Health Data Service
• Otherstbd?

The UDHP trend is in a very early stage. Gartner estimated in its April 2024 report that the market is penetrating only 5% and UDHP adoption will take 5 to 10 years.

As of today, the functions of UDHP products are not unified. In the early stage market, it is not uncommon for a company’s early stage products to be different. We will discuss some possible consequences in the “Business and Strategic Meaning of UDHPS” below.

In countries outside the United States, Epic and Cerner may lock down the health system and try to become UDHPS itself.

In the appendix at the end of the post, we provide a list of resources to further explain UDHP.

UDHP promises a range of potential value propositions:

• Improve clinical care and unify current dispersed patient and clinician experience
• Overcome the limitations of today's EHR, e.g.
  • Standardized data models for EHR and digital health applications
  • Promote two-way data flow
  • Provide low-code/no-code tools to manage workflows and processes for care teams including patients
  • Create a market for innovative third-party applications
  • Capture new, innovative data sources related to health, patient-generated data, psychological data, etc., e.g.
• Provides a modular combination architecture
• Enable common infrastructure to unify today’s dispersion points.
• Provide competitive advantage. We will discuss it more broadly below.

We will provide several case studies to illustrate how UDHP is developed and deployed:

• ServiceNow UDHP supplier case study
• Case Study on Healthcare Providers for UDHP Deployment – Mayo Clinic Platform

We invite other UDHP vendors to write a substantial guest post describing their products and how customers are deployed. (For more information, please write to Vince Vince@bhtinfo.)

Case Study: ServiceNow’s Unified Digital Health Platform in Healthcare Operations

In practice, an example of UDHP is ServiceNow's digital health platform. This case study examines their architecture, custom features, and realistic applications in healthcare provider settings.

ServiceNow's UDHP architecture and key components

As shown in the following diagram, ServiceNow's digital health platform is structured to integrate multiple healthcare workflows while ensuring compliance and security. The platform is built on a multi-layer architecture, which includes:

• Data Layer: A centralized repository for structured and unstructured healthcare data that ensures accessibility and accuracy across systems.
• Safety Layer: Provides a compliance framework and safety controls to protect sensitive patient information and comply with regulatory standards.
• Application Layer: Hosted a variety of healthcare applications such as electronic health records (EHR), patient engagement tools, and provider workflow management.
• Infrastructure layer: Cloud-based and on-premises solutions to support scalability, availability, and interoperability of multiple healthcare systems.

A layered approach enables healthcare organizations to integrate existing IT systems while adopting new digital health solutions.

Custom workflow capabilities: Improve operational efficiency

One of the main advantages of ServiceNow UDHP is its ability to support customized workflows tailored to the needs of healthcare providers. Custom workflows enable organizations to automate and optimize processes beyond standard out-of-the-box solutions.

Example: Clinician’s custom workflow

A common challenge in healthcare is the complexity of onboarding new clinicians, especially in a large network of hospitals. The traditional onboarding process involves multiple departments, including HR, IT and certificate teams, often resulting in inefficiency.

Using ServiceNow's WorkFlow automation tool, healthcare organizations can create custom onboarding processes:

• Automated credential verification: Integrate with third-party verification services to ensure compliance before clinicians start practicing.
• Coordinated IT provides: Automatically allocate required system access, including EHR permissions and a secure messaging platform.
• Tracking the Getting Started: Provide real-time visibility to HR and department managers to reduce administrative delays.

By implementing structured digital workflows, healthcare organizations can speed up onboarding, reduce management workloads, and enhance compliance tracking.

Example of ServiceNow UDHP in Healthcare Providers

Some healthcare organizations have deployed ServiceNow's platform to address operational inefficiencies and improve service delivery. The following example highlights how to apply UDHP functionality in different healthcare settings.

1. Novant Health: Reduce administrative bottlenecks

Novant Health implemented ServiceNow to simplify IT service management and automate healthcare workflows. By leveraging UDHP capabilities, the organization improves system uptime and reduces patient care delays caused by IT-related issues. Automated workflows ensure clinicians have immediate access to the necessary systems, reducing the time spent on administrative requests.

2. Sentara Healthcare: Digital Workflow Optimization

Sentara Healthcare uses ServiceNow's digital workflow to integrate various operational processes across its network of hospitals and outpatient centers. The platform enables real-time tracking of device maintenance requests, employee allocation and patient coordination, thereby improving the efficiency of care services.

3. Elara Care: Standardization Process across Multiple Locations

Home healthcare provider Elara Caring faces challenges in managing patient recommendations, caregivers programs and compliance documentation. By adopting ServiceNow's UDHP, Elara cares about these processes unify these processes into a single workflow, reducing errors and improving overall patient service coordination.

in conclusion

ServiceNow's UDHP illustrates the potential of digital platforms to optimize healthcare workflows, improve operational efficiency and ensure compliance. By leveraging structured data, automate and customize workflows, healthcare organizations can adapt platforms to their unique operational needs.

As more healthcare providers turn toward digital transformation, UDHP will play a key role in bridging the gap between traditional healthcare IT systems and emerging digital health innovations.

Vince Kuraitis JD/MBA is an independent consultant with over 35 years of experience in over 150 healthcare and technology companies. He published Medical Platform Blogwhere this article first appeared. Girish Muralidharan He was Senior Vice President of GE Healthcare until April 2024 and has served in various executive business management roles for imaging devices, enabling technology services, digital platforms and solutions for the past 20 years.Dr. Jody Rank is a researcher with over 30 years of experience in global and domestic health technologies and has covered AI, data analysis and SDOH through Chilmark research.