Gregg Church, President at 4medica joins TecHRseries in this chat to share a few thoughts on the evolving tech-healthcare provider partnerships of today while diving into his thoughts on how tech will impact healthcare in the years to come.
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Can you tell us a little about yourself Gregg? We’d love to hear about your journey at 4medica, how has the company and product evolved over the years?
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Thank you for the opportunity to share my journey here at 4medica these past 10 years. I have a lot of persistence to see the industry improve the overall healthcare experience and strive for better health outcomes. Since starting with the company back in 2010, I have watched 4medica evolve into becoming a patient-centric wellness management platform ensuring all Americans gain access to their sensitive clinical data ─ securely, reliably and timely. The vision of 4medica is to revolutionize healthcare by CONNECTING every patient’s data and making it accessible in real time. We recently trademarked the company’s tagline “One Patient…One Record” as we emphatically believe there should only be one patient record that is controlled by the patient. As we continue to evolve through the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s vision has never been more important to keep all consumers of healthcare as the nation’s top focus. As a matter of fact, we launched the 4medica COVID-19 Employee Wellness Management solution in just a few short weeks to further address the need for helping U.S. companies and organizations safely re-open and bring people back to some level of normalcy. We quickly leveraged our 22 years of clinical interoperability experience to help organize and share patient-centric lab data and other COVID-19 wellness management information that healthcare providers, employers, schools and universities needed to help reduce exposures in communities where outbreaks were rising quickly and where essential businesses could not shut their doors. Because we are a cloud-based software development company, we were able to quickly pivot and implement a secure wellness management solution leveraging our core technologies and web-based apps to create a viable way for sensitive information to be exchanged between key stakeholders managing COVID-19 outbreaks and positive cases.
Over the last few years, how have you seen SaaS innovations impact the healthcare industry? In what ways has the industry witnessed key changes the last few months during the Covid-19 pandemic?
Access to clinical data and delivering real-time data insights (reporting and analytics), as proven SaaS-based solutions, has positively impacted the healthcare industry over the last few years. Data insights at the “point-of-care” allow healthcare providers to make real-time clinical decisions. Legacy (installed software solutions) limits one’s ability to quickly collaborate and exchange patient data among disparate healthcare systems. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations of all types and sizes can reliably and safely share important patient demographics and clinical data at the “point of care” to ensure a patient’s health status is never compromised. Although we lack a Universal Patient ID in America, healthcare delivery systems are engaging more often in real-time data sharing initiatives, driven primarily by state health information exchanges (HIEs) and other health management and accountable care networks agreeing to share and monitor clinical care across the care continuum. The absence of a Universal Patient ID puts added pressure on each of the disparate healthcare systems and providers to accurately match clinical records to each unique patient ID. 4medica has the ability to accurately conduct patient identification and matching in a real-time processing mode, while assigning its 4EverID to each unique patient matched before sharing and collaborating on clinical data exchanged during care coordination.
How have you seen tech-healthcare provider partnerships this year help businesses support employee care practices during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns?
Yes, I have observed some incredible tech-healthcare provider partnerships form to support employee care. Hospital-based and commercial labs quickly pivoted from their normal clinical testing to partner with public health agencies to increase COVID-19 testing for “high-risk” individuals residing in the country. Drive-by/walk-up testing sites were quickly deployed by leading healthcare systems and labs, and telemedicine platforms were quickly integrated to provide immediate access to remote patient care in communities where lockdown/safer-at-home orders were strictly enforced. 4medica created its COVID-19 wellness management platform to integrate labs, providers and employers together to securely and privately collaborate with employees exposed to COVID-19, and needing immediate medical assessment and care directive options.
How will the demand for SaaS capabilities in healthcare and healthtech now transform and shape up to influence a different market because of the pandemic? What will the future of healthcare look like few years down the line in your view?
SaaS capabilities being adopted in health IT will continue to transform across the industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Adopting newer technologies to improve the speed of implementation and accuracy data sharing and care coordinate management will further support SaaS delivery and capabilities that were once “taboo” for healthcare CIOs to consider in their disparate database operating environments. Fewer health IT vendors and increased integrated capabilities among the reduced vendor landscape will be prevalent in the years down the line.
What are some of the biggest takeaways you’d share with business leaders and entrepreneurs from the year 2020?
Agility creates stability. Be agile and look for more efficient delivery models to increase performance and tangible ROI value for your existing client base. Listen to your clients and be willing to adapt to their needs. Be innovative and create NEW products and services to modernize and improve legacy processes. Remember, clients do not buy software or technology alone to solve a business problem, they buy a proven outcome.
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Could you talk about some of the biggest game-changing tech innovations in healthcare in your view that are setting new standards for the industry?
Intelligent and predictive analytics inspire me a lot. Software that aggregates, analyzes and learns from multiple internal and external sources of data, predicts potential problems, and recommends actions to avert them. These solutions are really powerful as we navigate the patients’ journey through COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment and full recovery.
The biggest leadership takeaway you’d share for “working through a pandemic,’’!
Stay persistent and overcome complacency. “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” ― Leon C. Megginson
Gregg Church is the President at 4medica