INTELLIGENT VERTICAL: HEALTHCARE
Swanepoel. “This is potentially the most
important aspect of building new hospitals
and clinics. While there is definite scope in
Africa for high-tech and high-performance
hospitals, it is the remote and rural areas
where access to healthcare is severely limited
or entirely lacking that can benefit most
from facilities that enable e-healthcare.”
Swanepoel indicates that Africa would
benefit most from a more decentralised
approach to healthcare that delivers services
to a larger number of smaller facilities, but
which can connect to larger hospitals in
the major centres when required, to obtain
specialist e-health services.
Clinical connectivity
Such e-health services rely on high quality
connectivity to be effective, and as Riaan
Graham, Sales Director for Ruckus Networks,
sub-Saharan Africa, suggests, it should not
be forgotten that faster, more reliable Wi-Fi
connectivity within the hospital or clinic is
critical to improving processes and outcomes
relating to patient care.
“Such Wi-Fi needs to be capable of
penetrating a wide range of construction
materials, since hospital construction
materials, such as poured concrete, metal
panels and lead-lined walls severely
challenge signal penetration,” said Graham.
“Furthermore, they must be able to work
with diverse medical devices and clinical
applications, offer effective security and be
easy to implement and maintain for IT staff.
Dropped calls and clinicians re-authenticating
their workstations due to inadequate
coverage can result in lost productivity, slower
responses and a multitude of other negative
outcomes. Therefore, the kind of technology
you want to implement is one that can
constantly monitor the air and steer Wi-Fi
signals around interference in real-time – after
all, it is vital to ensure effective connectivity in
a sector where the difference between good
and bad communications could quite literally
be a matter of life and death.”
While effective Wi-Fi solutions see to the
current needs of the hospital or clinic, it
is also vital for these facilities to invest in
realistic solutions that can also assist in
managing access and, more importantly, the
quality of care.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Clinical insights
According to PBT Group, the sheer volume of
available medical data means that BI can be
utilised as a tool by a healthcare institution
to make smarter and quicker decisions.
“Having analysed information about a patient
readily available provides the opportunity
for the healthcare practitioner to access the
correct information faster, which can result in
correct decisions being made upfront,” said
Yolana Smit, Regional Director (Gauteng)
at PBT Group. “Such detail can aid the
practitioner in turning around a quicker
diagnosis and take action as needed. Further
to this, making use of advanced analytics
in the healthcare space also provides the
opportunity for such organisations to analyse
or identify risk at the onset of the process,
which can assist in helping to detect any
fraudulent information, or details that show
significant errors. It is about giving the right
people access to the right information at the
right time, in aid of supporting patient care.”
Further leveraging the clinical connectivity
trends, healthcare service providers in
Africa can leverage diagnostic knowledge-
bases globally to empower medical staff
to stay current with the latest medical
research findings.
Future secure
Riaan Badenhorst, General Manager
at Kaspersky Lab Africa, suggests that
if a hospital aims to take advantage of
technologies to reap such benefits, then the
facility must ensure that its cybersecurity is
nothing less than top-notch.
“Not only are there laws governing
the protection of confidential patient
information that no hospital wants to fall
foul of, but more pertinently, systems today
are now inter-connected and mobile devices
are used extensively for remote access and
for data sharing,” said Badenhorst.
“This digitisation increasingly exposes
healthcare organisations to both generic
and targeted type cyberattacks.”
A true cybersecurity strategy will help to
secure both patient and staff data against
theft, loss or corruption – where the
reputation of a healthcare facility is a non-
“
DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
CERTAINLY OFFERS
INCREDIBLE
POTENTIAL
BENEFITS FOR
THE HEALTHCARE
SECTOR IN AFRICA.
negligible asset. A cyberattack – regardless
of its nature – will damage the credibility of
the facility, which is why it is vital to mitigate
such risk by implementing advanced security
tools and services.
“Ultimately, in an industry that works with
huge amounts of vital data, the transparency
and cross-integration of a clinic's IT and its
security is critical,” said Badenhorst.
“Automated security provisioning enables
the secure and uncompromised adoption
of new technologies that help safeguard its
reputation, while the prevention of generic
attacks must go hand-in-hand with developing
effective protection, detection and response
mechanisms against targeted attacks.”
Swanepoel added: “Digital Transformation
certainly offers incredible potential benefits
for the healthcare sector in Africa, not only
enabling it to design better hospitals to
improve patient well-being, but also to make
full use of current technologies to improve
patient care. With this, while the digital
evolution is both important and necessary,
it is vital that developments to improve
facilities are underpinned by its functional
requirements, which are facilitated by the
technology and not driven by it.
“This means taking a holistic and well-
planned approach to introducing all new
systems, to ensure these are fully integrated
and aid – rather than impede – delivery
of next generation patient care, while
maintaining high security standards
to protect patients and the healthcare
facilities assets.” n
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