RIPE FOR DISRUPTION

RIPE FORDISRUPTION HOW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES LIKE CLOUD, AI AND IOT ARE RESHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY.

The Covid-19 crisis is forcing healthcare sector to use digital technologies to enable better care, streamline operations and cut costs. Historically, this sector has been a laggard when it comes to digital transformation. Now, the pandemic has served as a catalyst for change, forcing healthcare providers to rethink their IT strategies.

Gartner says the volatility brought in by the coronavirus pandemic is challenging the current operating and business models in the healthcare industry. With effective preparation vand response plans, healthcare CIOs and digital health leaders can use this as an opportunity to drive meaningful change.

“In the Middle East, chronic diseases are prevalent due to citizens adopting more sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles. As a result, it has become more important to track disease trends and monitor chronic patients’ adherence to treatment schedules and recovery progress. Technology is constantly evolving across the globe, adapting to current challenges in many industries. The health care industry has not been excluded from this transformation, with digital technologies contributing to the early detection and prevention of communicable and chronic diseases,” says Alaa Adel, managing director, Cerner Middle East & Africa

Manish Ranjan, program manager from IDC, says there is increasing use of emerging technologies within the healthcare industry. Technologies like AI, RPA, analytics, IoT and robotics are helping the healthcare facilities and professionals to provide much more efficient and personalised care.

One of the key trends set to transform the healthcare landscape

Alaa Adel

is telemedicine. Cerner identifies telemedicine as a key capability, both in the context of virtual health and virtual care, empowering organisations to increase access while lowering the cost of delivering health care services across the continuum of care. Using an ecosystem of virtual and remote services and technology, organisations can provide care at a distance, thereby enabling the delivery of quality costeffective care anywhere.

Another major trend that is reshaping healthcare is artificial intelligence, which is being applied in everything from diagnosis to data management.

Fadi Kanafani, general manager and MD, Middle East – NetApp, explains why AI will have a significant impact on healthcare: “It achieves business outcomes in minutes and hours through deep learning which used to require months and years of studies and analytics before. As a result, this allows physicians access to knowledge that has not been available before. It helps scientists and pharmaceutical companies find the best medication needed for certain diseases or outbreaks and perform a surgery with all required relevant historical data to ensure a successful operation.”

Rohit Bhargava, practice head – could and security, Cloud Box Technologies, points out at some other technologies infiltrating the industry. “Virtual Reality is lending itself to strengthening the delivery of patient care through education, whether it is about remaining updated on personal health, preparation for medical procedures, etc. At the same time, robotics are making their way into the industry by entering the areas of surgery, pharma, hospital disinfection, and nano technology will be used a lot more for drug delivery to or for more precise medical diagnosis. The healthcare industry is on the brink of some massive changes that will provide far greater healthcare possibilities.”

IoT has also opened up a myriad of opportunities in healthcare, including remote monitoring. “IoT is already well on its way to transforming healthcare. Personal care devices for detecting blood sugar level, personal EKG on smart watches, connected ultrasounds etc, are becoming more common,” says Yossi Naar, chief visionary officer and cofounder, Cybereason.

Feras Zeidan, regional director from Mitel says from wearables to locating the physical location of heart machines (RTLS), IoT will be used in a minimum of 35 different applications in healthcare. “Previously, budgets were mainly spent on passive and active infrastructure. Budgets are now spent on applications, communications and IoT integration platforms.”

The burden of privacy

Healthcare providers amass huge amounts of data that is difficult to use and secure. Data breaches in the healthcare sector can prove to be more costly, where phishing campaigns and targeted cyberattacks have become more common these days.

The recent pandemic, and the dramatic shift to a new normal where remote working has become the de facto standard, has left many organisations exposed and unprepared. This is particularly true for healthcare organisations where remote working wasn’t as pervasive as say it was in technology companies,” says Marco Rottigni, CTSO, EMEA, Qualys. “As a consequence, these organisations are realising that their existing security measures are often inadequate and

Fadi Kanafani

Rohit Bhargava

lack some fundamental capabilities.”

“While digital healthcare has rapidly evolved, the underpinning networks have not; many still operate a flat trust model. Once you log in, access to vital data and services is relatively unimpeded. This is an ideal environment for cyberattacks to quickly propagate. By stealing a clinician’s digital credentials via email phishing or social engineering, the attacker essentially has free rein. Attackers are increasingly using AI too, to customise and personalise attacks at speed and scale,” says Ammar Enaya, regional director – Middle East, Turkey and North Africa at Vectra.

Perhaps, what makes cybersecurity a unique challenge for healthcare providers is the fact the biggest threat comes from insiders, not external actors.

Feras Zeidan

“Healthcare is the only industry where employees are the predominant cause of breaches. Without data leak prevention measures in place, organisations may expose patient data and risk substantial fines. Having data loss prevention software in place to control what data is shared via emails, is therefore an essential component of data protection. Unfortunately, now is not the time to ignore security, even though other IT considerations may seem more pressing,” says Werno Gevers, cybersecurity specialist at Mimecast.

Morey Haber, CTO & CISO, BeyondTrust says healthcare organisations must implement an identity governance program to manage an identities access to sensitive data and a privileged access management program to safeguard the most sensitive accounts. This includes even the removal of administrator accounts in favor of least privileged access.

“Ensure all users are trained on cybersecurity threats including recommended practices for safeguarding credentials and threats like phishing attacks,” he adds.

Shifting priorities

How’s Covid-19 impacting hospitals’ IT purchasing decisions?

“The healthcare sector has played a major role during COVID-19, and technology has been a key enabler to maintaining continuity of operations, ongoing patient care, and speeding

Ammar Enaya

AT THE SAME TIME, ROBOTICS ARE MAKING THEIR WAY INTO THE INDUSTRY BY ENTERING THE AREAS OF SURGERY, PHARMA, HOSPITAL DISINFECTION, AND NANO TECHNOLOGY WILL BE USED A LOT MORE FOR DRUG DELIVERY TO OR FOR MORE PRECISE MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS.

diagnosis of diseases. As technology has evolved, the cloud has become more prevalent in healthcare and the need to keep things onprem and inhouse has diminished. Cloud has leveled the playing field and truly democratised IT. What this means in practicality is that smaller hospitals have the opportunity to buy solutions that they previously could not have afforded, because it can be purchased as-a

Werno Gevers

service,” says Kanafani from NetApp.

Adel from Cerner says health organisations may postpone implementations due to the lack of resources to support these plans. “However, some technologies, particularly telehealth, are crucial for clinicians to stay connected with patients. In addition, these facilities are increasing their spending on technologies that help them deal with COVID-19 pressures with a growing interest in telemedicine capabilities and communication platforms. Strategic organisations will continue to evaluate what do these new digital tools mean post the pandemic in what they plan to adopt and use, for example, communication tools that will be used with the clinically integrated network.”

The current COVID-19 situation has changed the way every business is tackling the situation, and in line with that, the healthcare sector has also been reviewing their IT expenditure in the short run. “Hospitals, in particular, were forced to invest in enabling their staff to work from home, which involved focusing on connectivity, access to information, etc. This led to a steep increase in cloud services to ensure business agility. However, a greater emphasis was also laid on ensuring that hospital data continued to be treated with the highest levels of security giving rise to cybersecurity technology being implemented,” Bhargawa from CloudBox concludes.