The healthcare industry has made it to the news quite frequently during the last few years. Many consider the industry is in crisis and discard its long-term sustainability unless deep transformation is achieved. Lyquix can help with some of the most pressing challenges the healthcare providers are facing nowadays:

• Quality – Patient's demands are always on the rise, especially when hit by growing costs. Healthcare providers need to increase the quality of patient care and the overall patient experience, minimize medical and administrative errors, and avoid deviations in service quality.
• Costs – Healthcare consumers, insurance companies and governments alike are showing growing concerns over escalating healthcare costs, which creates a tremendous pressure for healthcare providers to reduce expenses.
• Information access – Healthcare providers need to collaborate with a broad group of stakeholders. This creates the problem of providing the right information to the right persons at the right time, and the flow of information from different sources and across multiple systems.
• Security and legal compliance – While providing the necessary information for proper decision-making, healthcare providers must make sure they meet strict security and data privacy standards, and comply with legal requirements.

When presented with this scenario is evident why there are no easy solutions. Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are large and complex institutions. However, tackling these issues in silos will not solve them, because the improvement in one area can hurt another one if not taken in consideration, with the unwanted rise in costs. It is important to use a holistic approach and identify the root causes of these problems. Some of the reasons that have been identified for the problems in the healthcare industry are:

• Processes – Redundant and manual processes, both for the clinical and administrative areas, constitute an inefficient addition to the cost structure, and are prone to mistakes and omissions.
• Systems – Disparate, redundant or disconnected information systems create an unnecessary administrative and maintenance burden, unproductive user's re-work, and locks valuable data.
• Data – Paper-based clinical data is not efficiently stored nor shared, precious time is wasted in collecting and storing the same data multiple times, and its access is cumbersome and slow. Many organizations have converted only part of their data to electronic format and operate in an extremely inefficient state where data is stored and used in both electronic and paper formats.

With the help of Information Technology innovative answers can be found to address the root causes and provide real solutions to the industry's challenges.

• Digitalization of health records and electronic tracking of patients – A pre-requisite for the implementation and success of any IT solution is to have all the necessary information in electronic format from the moment it is generated, even beyond the care center space.
• Streamline clinical and business processes – Re-engineering of the healthcare processes with an eye on the whole patient care cycle allows for the identification of redundancies, unnecessary paperwork, and opportunities for automation.
• Automate back-office activities – Real-time patient information enables for the automation of operational and administrative tasks, as well as the collection, generation and reporting of key quality and performance indicators. At the same time it allows for automatic compliance and enforcement of legal mandates and policies.
• Ubiquitous and real-time access to information – With integrated data storage accessible from multiple devices and locations, caregivers, patients, administrators and officials can instantly reach and share the information they need to perform their jobs, leverage on more abundant knowledge to reduce mistakes, reduce response times, and increase overall quality and patient satisfaction.
• Self-serving systems – Individuals are taking greater control of their own well being. With immediate and remote access to information customized to their own needs, they can effectively reduce the workload on the healthcare organization, and contribute to a rapid detection and response to healthcare needs.