A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives, a curated forum for enterprise technology leaders, nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the CIOApplications Editorial Board.
Comprehensive Pain Specialists
Microsoft Office 365 Transforming Telemedicine
Organizations around the globe are leveraging Office 365 for improved productivity, seamless sharing, and automation. Today, Office 365 plays a vital role in every organization including hospitals. Moreover, with telemedicine trending, Skype and Assure are inevitable aspects for seamless video communication between the patient and the practitioner.
The Transition Path
Taking a look at the big picture, there are several areas where Microsoft can mark its presence in the Medical arena. We have adopted Office 365 for file sharing, patient records, emailing and also for collecting information from patients who are at home.
Today, the easiest method for treatment is to keep people longer at home as families have become extended care givers. This is another area where technology has marked its presence. Cameras and wearable gadgets allow practitioners to collect accurate patient information, with assistance of applications like Skype, and spreadsheets. Moreover, patient records are made accessible to the patient and care taker, allowing seamless data transfer and visibility with unified patient records.
The Technology Enabler
While considering the traditional Electronic Medical Records (EMR), the ability to get medical records back in and forth between EMR’s were challenging. The communications, as well as data transfer were not easy before the implementation of Office 365. According to my point of view, Office has the full potential to offer seamless automation, communication, and data transfer ability once all the permissions are effectively managed.
Moreover, in telemedicine—Skype— the instant messaging app that provides online text message and video chat services from Microsoft really has the potential to make telemedicine easier especially if working at care and diverse situations. For instance, Skype allows collecting patient information and inspecting patient even when they are at home.
Leveraging Office 365, we moved into SharePoint from the traditional file sharing system and move our file storage into SharePoint. It now allows us seamless data sharing and mobility, improving efficiency, as well as seamless collaboration among everyone in the organization. It even made emailing simpler, as there is no need of VPN with SharePoint, allowing us to collect information with ease. In addition, One Drive was adopted, replacing My Documents, so that no longer have to worry about computer crashing, and losing documents.
Though the backup strategies and security group management of Office 365 has been tricky, the support files and documents has been of great assistance in seamless implementation of the solution. Moreover, I could say that Office 365 and Azure has been a great blessing to our company. It allowed us to shift from data center infrastructure to network infrastructure, allowing flawless maintenance and improving productivity. Moreover, instead of buying licenses and making additional expenses, Office 365 allows to implement seamlessly allowing cost saving and management savings.
The Evolving Role of CIOs
Basically, our goal is to become the market differentiator because of the IT capabilities that we have. As technology is being leveraged rapidly, my role as a CIO is evolving, from simple management to making critical decisions for the organization’s IT assets.
