Technologies for analysing and improving healthcare processes

Gordon, Neil

Abstract

The right to a healthy life is a natural expectation and recognised as a human right (WHO, 2017) – and is further recognised as such in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, where Goal 3 focusses on “good health and well-being” (United Nations., 2019). However, providing healthcare to support this remains a complex and expensive challenge. The cost of global health care for 2019 is anticipated to grow by over 7% (Willis Towers Watson, 2018), and has shown a similar pattern of growth over several years. Improvements in diagnosis, and the identification of new disease(s), as well as the discovery of new – and often very expensive treatments – all put pressures on national health care systems, whether private or state based (Aspden and NRC, 2002).
Technology offers numerous ways to improve healthcare provision, both through direct application of technologies that can empower individuals to manage their own health, particularly those with illnesses, as well as supporting healthcare professionals in their own work (Chaudhry et al, 2006). The advent of widely accessible computing – through mobile devices with internet access, as well as the potential for aggregating, analysing and learning from the mass of data that can be provided – means that there is wide scope to empower people and help those providing healthcare services. Furthermore, technology changes and advances can also improve healthcare provision through improving the service pipeline, from the design of individual procedures and operations, to improving the provision of healthcare with electronic health records. There remain many challenges to adopting all of these technologies, including the development of fit-for-purpose systems that can actually provide the benefits promised.
This chapter will discuss some of the ways that technology can assist through the analysis and improvement of healthcare processes. It begins with an overview of healthcare processes, and then considers some different approaches to modelling these. From the context of technology, the chapter summarises some of the tools that can assist in analysing a given healthcare process, and how this can lead to an improvement in the process.

Citation

Gordon, N. (in press). Technologies for analysing and improving healthcare processes. In W. Leal Filho, T. Wall, A. Azul, L. Brandli, & P. Özuyar (Eds.), Good Health and Well-Being

• Acceptance Date: Sep 6, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 18, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 26, 2019
• Series Title: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Series ISSN: 2523-7403
• Book Title: Good Health and Well-Being
• ISBN: 978-3-319-95680-0
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/2704996
• Publisher URL: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319956800