Data sharing and collaboration in the cloud are the foundations of innovation in healthcare, according to South African healthcare and technology experts.
Speaking during the second of the 2022 AWS Cloud Technology Series of events, where experts discussed technology-enabled healthcare delivery, Jean Pierre Horne, Head of Healthcare at Amazon Web Services, said innovation was somewhat lagging in healthcare. “The financial, travel, transportation and entertainment sectors have introduced scores of innovations that have improved customer experience and personalise service. We need to bring this type of innovation into the healthcare sector. Healthcare needs to modernise and migrate from legacy infrastructure and applications to the cloud and leverage data driven insights to improve patient outcomes that will help reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies,” he said.
Horne said leveraging healthcare data and being able to predict healthcare-relevant events using AI and machine learning can improve patients’ outcomes and enable the sector to develop a more patient-centric approach to improving patient care.
“At AWS, one of our leadership principles is working backwards from our customers; and we have worked with a number of customers in South Africa and globally to improve patient care and the patient experience. For example, Right ePharmacy, which is using the AWS Cloud to revolutionise chronic last-mile medication dispensing in public healthcare patients with smart dispensing units and collect-and-go electronic lockers, and the RecoMed online booking platform running on AWS, which is now available through medical aid schemes, private hospital groups and retail pharmacies across the country,” he said.
He also noted innovators such as Beyond Wireless who manage the entire medicine cold chain to ensure medicines, vaccines and blood supplies maintain the optimum temperatures using IOT and refrigerator devices, and biotechnology firm Insilico Medicine, which is using AWS and a Pharma.AI platform to save costs and accelerate drug discovery, allowing for medicines to be developed at least three years faster. Janssen Pharmaceutica used AWS services, including Amazon SageMaker, to automate and scale its machine learning pipeline and improve model development, while Medtronic and AWS partnered to provide underserved communities with artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted colonoscopies.
Said Horne: “Pivoting on healthcare data is where we can improve healthcare outcomes, so many of our customers are using offerings such as AWS Data lab with design and build AI/ML models to improve insights, forecasting and prediction of healthcare relevant events. To foster the pace of innovation, AWS has launched a $40 million healthcare equity fund to harness the power of the cloud to advance health equity globally. This will improve access to technology for healthcare innovation in underserved communities.”
Horne noted it is important that platforms for citizens to engage with the government offer ease of use and a good digital experience through technology that they are already familiar with, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, such as GovChat, which also uses AWS Cloud for citizen engagement. The provision of patient-centric healthcare services on these platforms just make sense rather than another “healthcare app” on patients' devices
Dr Rajeev Rao Eashwari, Director for eHealth, Hospital Services at the Gauteng Department of Health, said: “As a medical doctor interested in healthcare IT, informatics and telemedicine, I believe technology can make life better for healthcare practitioners. However, while many projects are under way, lots of them are happening in silos. We have to bring all the data together in a vendor-neutral cloud platform so we can archive and access it across the continuum of care, in real-time, to manage patients better.”
Healthcare and technology stakeholders attending the event raised questions around whether privacy legislation and security concerns would hamper data sharing that underpinned innovation.
Christelna Reynecke, COO at the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), said: “We are seeing an increase in the number of South African innovators seeking to solve South African problems. We have exceptional scientists in the country. But you need a level of transparency and interoperability for shared data to work, so legislation, regulations and concerns around security can be a challenge.”
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