Healthcare organisations face a series of challenges as they work to meet their accessibility targets, handle large volumes of incoming calls and manage their workforces efficiently. Off-the-shelf unified communications platforms have enabled these organisations to transform away from costly, inflexible, on-premise systems but often these do not make it easy to integrate with sector-specific applications or specialised systems from other vendors. In addition, valuable functionality such as analytics can be hard to accommodate, leaving healthcare organisations with incomplete access to new innovations and the existing capabilities they need to operate effectively.
These opportunity gaps and potential performance deficits create a significant opportunity for service providers to add value by layering additional functionality, integrations, features and support on top of popular UC platforms. This presents a compelling new marketplace and provides a route for service providers to replace traditional service revenues if they can demonstrate their skills and deliver the specialisms that healthcare organisations need.
“In regard to healthcare, performance and reporting is very much focused on compliance,” says Colin Gill, the Vice President of Cisco Business at Akixi.
“In the UK, primary health care must hit specific KPIs to attain and retain certain funding. So this how being able to measure and respond to KPIs in real-time is vital.”
Tasks range from triage of initial calls to doctors’ surgeries through to telemedicine and monitoring of chronic conditions. Systems need not only to be able to handle high volume, general calls, such as the 2,500 calls that UK doctor surgeries receive each week on average, but also to provide specialist support for individual patients. In addition, a large population of workers need access to patient records, consultants’ diaries, booking of facilities and mobile connectivity for workers out in the communities they serve.
