If any industry has needed to up the ante when it comes to communication over the last 12 months, it’s the healthcare industry.
Never before have healthcare experts around the world been so heavily relied upon in such difficult circumstances. These efforts have been made while implementing strict precautionary measures due to the pandemic which often mean doctors cannot be in the same room as their colleagues or patients.
But where some industries may have been able to quickly purchase an ‘off-the-shelf’ UCaaS offering to keep in touch with employees, the healthcare space is more complex.
CPaaS was designed for scenarios like this. Health institutions, among others, have been able to quickly adapt their systems and practices to deliver an effective experience for the people that need them most.
Multiple IT systems are used within just a single health organisation, let alone whole ecosystems that have to communicate. This is before you’ve even considered what platforms the patient will be using.
CPaaS helps make these challenges manageable.
What is CPaaS
Put simply, communications platform as a service, or CPaaS, uses cloud technology to connect people and applications in a fast, efficient and affordable way.
If a company is starting with a blank slate than its simple to create applications with the necessary interoperability built in. But not all companies and industry have this luxury and are instead running countless systems build by different developers over long periods of time.
CPaaS provides a framework for linking these systems together and embedding UC solutions into an architecture that is already there, rather than building something new.
The chances are most people have already experienced CPaaS in action without realising it.
You may have noticed that you can now talk to your network provider on Facebook Messenger or a retail chain on WhatsApp. This is in contrast to when you may have spoken to your bank via a purpose-built chat function on their website or baked into an app, for example.
All of these characteristics have brought considerable benefits to the healthcare industry, particularly during the pandemic.
At the very highest level, the implementation of CPaaS has been an enabler for remote consultations – therefore minimising the number of people that need to visit already busy GP practices and hospitals.
The as-a-service nature of CPaaS has meant that these solutions can be launched relatively small to assess their effectiveness, but then scaled instantly as their concept is proven and demand rises.
It may seem simple to the patient, but a number of processes are going on behind the scenes to link together patient records; authenticate that the patient is who they say they are; and potentially prescribe medication – all in an environment where data is adequately protected.
The omnichannel approach - across the likes of voice, video and chat - along with perceptive features such as voice recognition help to make the experience accessible for the patient and ultimately help to reach the end goal.
