USE CASE / HEALTHCARE (Regional Integrated Care Systems)

Enabling connected and sustainable health care ecosystems centered around patients

Regional integrated care systems have been introduced around the world with the goal of integrating care across the full continuum of care (i.e., across public health, primary care, acute care, home and community care and long-term care), while serving a population over a wide geographical area.

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Context

Examples of regional integrated care systems have existed in Canada since the early 2000s, such as Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) in BC and Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) in Ontario, which have formed more recently.

These were created in an effort to end hallway health care and build a connected and sustainable health care system centered around patients, families and caregivers. This model of care helps bring together health care providers to work as one team to support patients through their healthcare journeys, while preventing duplication of services in some areas and lack of services in others. These models have the task of solving immediate priorities without introducing interoperability hassles, while needing to have the ability to work as part of an ecosystem

While this vision is a positive way forward, it has not been practical to achieve without adopting fundamental digital infrastructure that makes the exchange of information easy, safe and seamless for all parties involved.

Problem

Patient

Patients and their caregivers are in need of user-friendly, digital tools to connect and coordinate to their currently siloed health journeys. They also need tools that help them discover services and facilitate patient directed data sharing and a seamless experience when moving between different health care services, providers and settings in a privacy-respecting way.

Regional Integrated Care Systems

Care providers and organizations within each regional integrated care system require a system that allows them to seamlessly collaborate, communicate, access, contribute and share clinical information across their patients’ care continuum.

These care systems have mandates to deliver, while leveraging existing assets and meeting the federal government’s new proposed privacy protection law (CPPA) and requirements to protect personal health information (PHI).

Jurisdiction

While each regional integrated care system will have unique local needs for the communities they serve, it is crucial that any technologies or services that are deployed within each of them have the ability to interoperate with the existing larger digital health ecosystem and standards so that they do not become siloed alongside each other, causing patient information to become trapped.

Solution

A digital ecosystem built to empower citizens to access trusted health information while respecting their privacy. After a patient is equipped with a trusted digital identity that can be trusted by any care provider in a regional integrated care system, they have the authority to grant granular access to health information to and from different providers through an app. The underlying consent authority that makes this possible is developed with privacy, interoperability and scale in mind.

For patients: remote identity proofing and connected care leads to reduced wait times and enhanced health outcomes

  • Agency of their PHI through a digital version of a health and identification card.
  • Access to a broad network of care providers and discovery of health services, such as virtual care.
  • Easier transitions from one provider to the next, with one patient record, and one care plan.
  • Access to 24/7 coordination of care and system navigation services, without the undertaking of any administrative processes.

For care providers and organizations within regional integrated care systems: This means they can access real time consent to health information, as well as contribute clinical data from their own encounters with the patient.

  • Flexibility to manage the implementation of services to meet the needs of their community and patients.
  • Enable services and software that support combining legacy and new system approaches, without vendor lock-in.
  • Ability to foster local collaboration, as well as greater communication and coordination around the patient with their privacy intact.
  • Quickly solve the technical flow and consent based sharing of data between organizations
  • Improved system efficiency, sustainability, value and reduced clinician burn-out.

For jurisdictions, a federated access network will allow regional integrated care systems to interoperate seamlessly with other ecosystems, essentially providing a doorway to a connected healthcare system.

With digital health as an integrated part of the healthcare journey, patient care from start to finish is supported, allowing for patients to remain healthy outside the hospital and access community and hospital based services more appropriately as needed to support their unique and evolving needs.

IDENTOS technology to support

The IDENTOS access control health community technology stack includes:

Federated Privacy Exchange (FPX)
Zero knowledge authorization and access network designed to easily connect a community of users to any number of data and digital service providers.

Digital Wallet
Personal digital wallet that secures access to their health data and allows users to easily connect and share their verified credentials across their community of care providers. The wallet becomes the patient control center for managing identity, consent and health data sharing throughout their journey between hospitals and health care providers

Community Navigator
A configurable patient facing front door, supported by Single Sign-on (SSO) and mobile (IOS and Android) app designed to enable, protect and connect the digital journey for users.

With the IDENTOS health community stack, tap into:

  • An open standards based, commercially supported health community stack, ready for regional integrated care systems like Regional Health Authorities and Ontario Health Teams today.
  • Digital ecosystems that are quick to launch.
  • Scalable patient identity - allowing patients to connect securely across various services.
  • Interoperability across networks and jurisdictions.

Modernize access technology, advance patient connectivity

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