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How to advance healthcare data interoperability with Microsoft Cloud
IT leaders have long been aware of the benefits that data interoperability creates, both internally and with external healthcare entities. Yet despite years of work and regulatory mandates, today’s healthcare ecosystem is still marked by data trapped in stand-alone systems.
But there’s good news. Cloud computing and services can play a pivotal role in helping IT leaders achieve this goal. And partnering with a systems integrator like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and utilizing platforms like Microsoft Azure can expedite this process.
How Microsoft cloud facilitates data interoperability
Besides the standard cloud features – such ascloud-based security, centralized data repositories, scalability, and more – Microsoft has introduced new capabilities specifically aimed at improving data management and interoperability. These new capabilities include:
- Azure Health Data Services (AHDS) ingests, manages, transforms, and persists health data to provide a holistic view of patients by unifying FHIR, DICOM, and MedTech data in one centralized place. As an Azure PaaS Service, it enables healthcare organizations to seamlessly combine health data on the Microsoft Cloud.
- Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare offers a starter healthcare data model that follows HL7 FHIR standards, and tools for data ingestion, which together aid data sharing with other services. Dataverse healthcare APIs and virtual health data tables enable interoperability and data exchange between Azure-based FHIR servers and FHIR-enabled endpoints.
- Healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric can ingest and transform FHIR resources from disparate sources into a relational structure, enriching them with unstructured data like clinician notes and imaging data. It uses a tiered approach with bronze, silver, and gold data lakehouses.
How TCS and Microsoft can help
In partnership with Microsoft, TCS offers extensive expertise – based on scores of healthcare engagements – and a suite of healthcare specific solutions to accelerate data interoperability.
“The future of healthcare is data-driven, breaking down silos and expanding the ecosystem,” says Magna Hadley, VP & Global Head Healthcare Advisor at TCS. “Interoperability brings benefits to healthcare such as increased productivity and better cost, improved patient care and experience, improved public health data and research, improved data security and easier data exchange.”
Specific healthcare-related accelerators include:
- Healthcare data interoperability: Enabling healthcare organizations to quickly develop, test, and evaluate specific, standards-based data integrations before migrating the applications from on-premises to the cloud. Reference use cases include:
- FHIR-based Prior Authorization on Microsoft Azure and other public clouds.
- Patient Cost/price Transparency, integrating patients, providers, and payers.
- Edge Claims to document potential out-of-pocket patient expenses prior to receiving care.
- TCS Compliant Data Interoperability for Healthcare using Microsoft Azure Health Data Services (on Microsoft AppSource): For Healthcare organizations that plan to leverage FHIR from Microsoft, this TCS service helps IT leaders understand the customer ecosystem and identify fit-for-purpose FHIR configurations available from Microsoft. TCS works with customers to:
- Understand the customer ecosystem and build use cases.
- Design and develop proof of value on the shortlisted use case(s).
- Review recommended FHIR usage within the customer organization.
The bottom line
Healthcare data interoperability remains a major challenge. By leveraging these technologies and partnering with experts like TCS and Microsoft, healthcare IT leaders can enhance data exchange, improve patient care, and drive innovation.
To learn more, visit Patient-centered Care Models Taking Center Stage in Life Sciences.
