This week, at Enterprise Connect, Intermedia announced it has launched Intermedia Healthcare Solutions, which aims to provide cloud technology and AI for healthcare communications and collaboration. Prior to Enterprise Connect, Mark Sher, SVP of product marketing, and Robert Oscanyan, senior director of product marketing, prebriefed me to discuss the solution.
Oscanyan started the discussion by sharing the gaps the company found while talking to healthcare organizations looking to modernize their communications.
“There are a few things driving it,” he told me. “First, they have many disparate systems. There are obviously interoperability and integration committees. Even those just using EHR are looking for ways to better connect it to other systems they’re using to try and drive better benefits and patient care.”
He added that lengthy revenue cycles, HIPAA compliance, and a need for more resources are spurring organizations to look for new ways. “We’re seeing customers coming to us—large orthopedic practices, large radiology groups, or family practices—looking to unify all of their systems onto one platform,” he said.
The company already has thousands of healthcare users using its solutions, according to Oscanyan, including LA County Health Services, which is the second largest municipal health provider in the US, along with small clinics, pediatrics practices, and dentists’ offices.
This echoes my prior discussions with healthcare IT executives. In general, most healthcare organizations limped into the pandemic with an abundance of legacy technology. This created a massive gap between what the hospital had and what it needed. One simple example is the use of video appointments to communicate with patients remotely. Today, this is standard but was, by far, the exception just a few years ago.
Mark Sher noted that they’re not just slapping a vanilla Internet voice relay on top of a healthcare organization. “The EHR integration is not trivial,” he said. “Our integration will work out of the box with Cerner, MedTech, Epic and many others, but you’ve got to do the work to develop the IVR and set it for what you need to do.”
Too often, vendors drop canned solutions into industries but are surprised when adoption is light. Workers often must flip between the communications tool and industry-specific apps, which creates a disjointed user experience. The path Intermedia is going down takes significantly more work as they need to integrate the apps but the winner is the end user as it creates a simpler experience.
Here’s what Intermedia Healthcare Solutions Will Include:
This is an interesting announcement from Intermedia. Enterprise Connect always has a cornucopia of technology news, but most vendors don’t bring a business angle to their innovation. In healthcare, communications can be a weak link and create massive gaps in processes due to the human latency required because of disjointed workflows. And with the complexities inherent in-patient care, bad communication can often be worse than no communication. So, vendors like Intermedia, with lengthy histories in the communications space, are well-positioned to help healthcare organizations become more efficient while they improve patient care.
