Improving Telehealth Efficiency: Digital Health Solutions and COTS

This report examines the challenges in implementing telehealth services, including physicians' dependence on computers and time constraints, and proposes solutions using digital health technologies. It highlights the benefits of cloud computing in healthcare, such as increased accessibility, scalability, flexibility, and reduced costs. The report identifies Oracle Health Sciences Safety Cloud as a suitable COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) solution to enhance telehealth efficiency, emphasizing its use of artificial intelligence and innovative interfaces. The conclusion underscores the effectiveness of cloud technology in addressing telehealth issues while emphasizing the importance of data security. The report provides references to support the findings and recommendations.

Running Head: Digital Health
DIGITAL HEALTH

Digital Health
Introduction
Telehealth is the system that makes the healthcare services more accessible to the patients. With
help of the telehealth, the patients can access the healthcare services online, without visiting the
hospitals (Liu et al., 2015). Despite all the benefits, implementation of the telehealth services is
posing several challenges for the healthcare professionals. Firstly, extensive use of telehealth
services is compelling the physicians to sit in front of the computer and offer the patients with
healthcare services. Secondly, in the case of telehealth, physicians require to offer the healthcare
service to the patients within a fixed time. The pre-determined time limit is also posing
challenges to the physicians for offering the quality healthcare solutions. Therefore, the
healthcare organizations need to use advanced applications of digital health technology for
making the telehealth services more efficient. The current research deals with the identification
of the solutions for the issues faced in telehealth system implementation. The research also
focuses on the identification of a COTS (Commercial Out-of-the-shelf) solution which can be
used to enhance the efficiency of the telehealth services.
Solution
There are two types of issues associated with the telehealth services-- extensive dependence on
the computers and the time-bounded nature of healthcare services. The key objective of using
telehealth services is increasing accessibility of health care services to the patients. However, the
lack of mobility of the physicians is actually affecting the accessibility of the services from other
parts of the hospitals. In a addition, the time-bounded nature of the telehealth services is also
making the task challenging for the physicians. The application of digital health technology
2

Digital Health
needs to be selected in such a way so that offering quality services becomes easier for the
physicians.
Cloud services in healthcare: Cloud computing is one of the latest applications of the digital
technologies. Use of the cloud services, in the recent years, is transforming the healthcare
industry significantly (Miah et al., 2017). The healthcare cloud system can be described as a
system that is used by service providers for storing the personal health information. In the case of
telehealth services, the organizations use the on-site servers for storing the data on the patients.
When the cloud-based services are used, the need of storing data in the on-site server reduces.
Instead, the healthcare service providers can store a larger amount of data on the cloud-based
network. Even the large image files required for radiology can also be stored in the cloud-based
storage effectively. The larger the storage in the cloud services is effective to offer quality
services to the patients.
The cloud-based systems can be accessed at any time (Nayak et al., 2018). So, while offering
healthcare services with the cloud-based systems, the issues associated with the time-bounded
nature of the conventional telehealth system also get eliminated. Using the cloud system, both
the patients and physicians can access the data. Therefore, offering the services and tracking the
progress of the patients becomes easier for the healthcare professionals.
Switching to the cloud-based healthcare system provides the healthcare organizations with
additional benefits such as the increased scalability, flexibility and reduced cost (Liu et al.,2015).
The demand for online health services might change over time. The cloud-based systems are
highly scalable. So, the healthcare service providers can easily adjust the capacity of the system
according to the demand. The cloud-based solutions are more flexible. A healthcare organization
3

Digital Health
can easily customize the solution as per their requirement. Lastly, the use of a cloud-based
system reduces the cost of storing and maintaining data. So, use of the systems is a more
profitable option for the healthcare service provider.
In addition to the benefits, the cloud-based services are associated with the risks of a data breach.
So, the healthcare organizations need to take preventive measures to reduce the risk of data
breaches. The actions such as protecting the data with passwords can ensure the security of the
stored data in cloud storage.
COTS cloud system
Oracle is one of the leading organizations in the digital technology industry. Oracle Health
Sciences Safety Cloud is one COTS solution that can be used by the healthcare organizations
(Oracle.com, 2018). The solution offered by Oracle focuses on creating an extensible and
flexible system to meet the specific needs of the healthcare service providers and avoiding the
expensive customization works. The solution also uses artificial intelligence which helps the
businesses to automate the processes and improve the efficiency. The innovative interfaces make
the system more accessible to the healthcare professionals. Finally, the solution also reduces the
cost of ownership and increase the security.
Conclusion
The current research indicates that the use of cloud technology is an effective option to resolve
the issues in telehealth. However, the organizations need to focus on keeping the data secured
also.
4

Digital Health
References
Oracle.com. (2018). Oracle Argus - Overview | Oracle. Retrieved from
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/health-sciences/safety/argus-safety/index.html
Miah, S. J., Hasan, J., & Gammack, J. G. (2017). On-Cloud Healthcare Clinic: An e-health
consultancy approach for remote communities in a developing country. Telematics and
Informatics, 34(1), 311-322.
Nayak, B., Padhi, S. K., & Pattnaik, P. K. (2018). Impact of Cloud Accountability on Clinical
Architecture and Acceptance of Healthcare System. In Information and Decision Sciences(pp.
149-157). Springer, Singapore.
Liu, C. H., Lin, F. Q., Chen, C. S., & Chen, T. S. (2015). Design of secure access control scheme
for personal health record‐based cloud healthcare service. Security and Communication
Networks, 8(7), 1332-1346.
5