Since the COVID-19 outbreak, every sector has faced a slowdown, however on the other hand, healthcare being at the epicenter, remains flooded with work load and is finding it difficult to manage with their current workforce as millions of lives are at stake.

In such unprecedented times, there is no debate to the fact that more and more functions of health care organizations must be automated, to free manpower for mission-critical work. And Microsoft Teams has emerged as the go-to platform for healthcare organization for automation thereby saving time & effort for other tasks. It’s evident from the statement of UK's NHS Digital's director of Technology, Ian Phoenix

"Technology is key to supporting patients who are self-isolating, and Teams makes sure they have the information they need and access to medical support and advice. For doctors and other NHS staff, this means that working remotely becomes much easier and more practical."

Today, thousands of top healthcare institutions have already adopted or are in the process of adopting Microsoft Teams. Teams not just enables secure collaboration, faster and noise-free communication but also ensures regulatory compliance, data privacy & security as well as API integrations - bringing everything under one roof and acting as a single integrated hub.

Healthcare providers need to be more alert and provide the best possible care in today's turbulent times. Microsoft Teams is enabling simple and secure communication with chat, video, voice, and fluid collaboration from anywhere and at any time - a must in today's crisis where number of cases outpaces far more than the number of health care professionals.

Let's look at features of MS teams that are proved to be beneficial for Healthcare:

Connect instantly with secure messaging

Microsoft teams enables healthcare professionals to securely communicate and collaborate with each other for instant knowledge sharing & faster decisions on further procedures. Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Bookings and Microsoft Lists heath care templates enables healthcare professionals to securely communicate and collaborate with each other and conduct virtual visits with patients - creating appointments and managing complex scheduling demands securely. Sending messages, capturing, and sharing images, and relaying urgent & sensitive information - all is done in a highly secured and compliant ecosystem with Teams.

Ensure Compliance

With Microsoft Teams, healthcare providers can be assured of an enhanced security while they exchange messages, capture images, and share critical documents, as Teams enables global compliances and standards. Teams meets Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) compliance standards. Teams also supports compliance with Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), Service Organization Controls (SOC) 1 and 2, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and more. Teams uses its own Microsoft 365 secure cloud and gives healthcare personnel a secured working environment to focus on critical assignments at hand.

Streamline Administrative Workflow

It takes only one-single click with Teams to streamline administrative workflow for healthcare institutions especially during the present crisis. Any announcement, alerts and important direction or new insights can be simply shared across the organization. And, managing shifts for clinicians & staff was also never so easy as it is with Team's integrated hub.

Flawless Collaboration

Collaboration is the most obvious, yet most critical aspect of Teams. Doctors around the world can fraternize through one single platform; Meetings can be seamlessly organized between different departments, units, specialties, and healthcare professionals - making collaboration possible without any hassle across distant geographies.

Microsoft Teams Graph API Integration

Organizations can easily leverage Teams meetings for their existing workflows. Teams can easily integrate with any existing workflow hence, enabling legacy applications to directly access Teams’ functionality. Microsoft Graph API enables integration of both - meeting-join as well as scheduling links with the healthcare applications such as electronic health record (EHR) systems. This makes Teams an important ingredient for latest innovations in Tele health, Firstline Worker System or EHR & others.

Teams is being widely used to integrate Healthcare management and coordination, as it fits as a vital tool to minimize redundant tasks, elevate communication, and bring new insights across the healthcare teams. Besides re-directing Patient-care messages from an EHR to team members, Teams is also used as secure sign-on to applications by creating support badges. Staff can simply tap their badge for authentication and log in directly in and out of Teams without entering credentials.

Source: Ignite 2020

Source: Ignite 2020

Telehealth Benefits

Connect, Communicate, Deliver

Simple as it may sound, but Teams addresses a very crucial aspect in healthcare management, that it enables them to reach their on-shift staff with targeted communications instantly. The sensitive and critical nature of healthcare and enormity of the crisis can have mult-fold repercussions owing to one wrong message. Timely execution of services depends heavily on the availability of key personnel. With Teams schedules, this aspect can be automated, helping in both - Saving time and Ensuring precision. Teams enables tags to be manually created- to organize users, based on skills, location, or roles. These tags once applied, can then be used to send automated messages via chat or channel conversation to pass on the information to respective stakeholders.

Outcomes and Capabilities of Microsoft Cloud

Along with Teams, Microsoft is helping brands leverage its cloud capabilities to support healthcare professionals handle the large-scale crisis at hand with enhanced patient management, empowered healthcare teams and accurate clinical and operational understandings - enabling better experience, better care and better insights.

Source: Ignite 2020

Source: Ignite 2020

It is pertinent to mention that there has been an enormous jump in the daily active user base in Microsoft Teams - 75Mn, with addition of 31 Mn in just over a month and it is the fastest growing application in terms of popularity and usage across healthcare vertical. For Healthcare industry, it brings forth a digital workplace that streamlines their communications, improves their workflow efficiency, integrates legacy applications, ensures security and regulatory compliance as well.

For more insights, following sessions at Ignite 2020 event by Microsoft, are highly recommended:

• Remote Patient Monitoring: Sharing a blueprint to enhance patient care and safety
  https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessions/bb380ea2-38ea-481f-9030-0c2fb5e978bb
  Intelligent Industry Solution Series: Enhancing patient care starts with comprehensive information and personalized treatment. Combined with increased safety measures, the healthcare industry has fast tracked telehealth solutions. One practice is Remote Patient Monitoring, which reduces in-person visits, boosts patient convenience and provider efficiency. In this session, we will look at Telehealth trends, and share a remote patient monitoring blueprint enabled by Microsoft and Intel.
  
  
• Virtual health and collaboration with Microsoft Teams in healthcare
  https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessions/c0671f52-c318-479f-bf1b-cef2463bb3e0
  Learn how healthcare organizations can help empower care teams to provide the best possible care with Microsoft Teams. This session will focus on virtual health and care team collaboration and dives deep into areas like the latest announcements
  
  

Espire Infolabs is a Global Partner for Microsoft Teams implementation. We have been continuously transforming the digital journey of our clients with an impressive customer experience delivery, aligning to their business objectives & ensuring positive business benefits. Drop us your feedback at marketing@espire.com and stay tuned to this space for recent trends and insights around everything digital!