How to navigate the bumpy first mile of healthcare IT data

We’re experiencing the impact of technology on the healthcare industry now more than ever. Doctors can visit their patients on computer screens; the results of x-rays, CT scans, blood tests and other data can be shared among remotely located specialists with ease and immediacy; prescriptions can be delivered to a local pharmacy in a matter of seconds with just the click of a button; and patients can access their own medical records in the cloud and share them with approved healthcare providers using an app on their phone. 

While these advances have revolutionized the healthcare industry, they have also created new requirements, including the need for fast, secure exchange of massive volumes of data. Some of this data is being synchronized via fixed links between large and tightly managed IT systems. But more often than you may expect, data arrives in these systems in the form of data files: CSVs, spreadsheets built from a template, legacy database loads, and more. 

Getting data transferred from variable and inconsistent sources, often from vastly disparate systems, typically requires an arduous process of manually assessing, parsing, and cleaning the data in preparation for use in the target system of record. This creates delays that ultimately slow down an effective healthcare delivery system: order for new equipment, the customer to a new EMR, reimbursement from a carrier, and anywhere else that relies on a file-based data transaction. 

The efficiency of AI-assisted data exchange

To allow healthcare organizations and their staff to share data files, the best option has long been to write code and maintain a data import solution themselves or to deploy an army of manual resources. This approach is both costly and inefficient. 

Flatfile solves this problem with their flexible, file-based data exchange platform. The artificial intelligence (AI) assisted platform intelligently determines how to repair, replace, and format data for its intended purpose on the fly. With the added guidance of a “human in the loop” — a designated individual or team assigned the task of resolving one-off or unique data issues —  these decisions are remembered and automatically applied in future workflows. 

Data is the lifeblood of the healthcare industry

Manual review of data files is not only tedious and prone to human error, it is also very inefficient, time consuming and expensive. Flatfile addresses all of these issues by providing powerful data validation tools within a configurable environment. This means an organized data review and approval process that is easy to use for health care staff and at the same time more secure, faster and consistent than ever before. 

Making data available more quickly and more efficiently is important for any business. In the healthcare industry, however, time is an extremely valuable resource. The sooner doctors can diagnose illnesses, the sooner they can begin treating them. The sooner institutions have access to real data, the sooner they can make life-saving decisions. Don’t let the data import process become your bottleneck. Loosen the hold that your data has on you by learning how to move it from your files to other systems faster, cleaner, and more efficiently.