care services Archives - IT Integrity

March 18, 2020by Tara ConnollyNews

Data – Driving Organisations from Instinct to Insights

Data is currently the most valuable asset in an enterprise, it’s the tool with which organisations can better understand their processes, it can be used to create better operational efficiency, and it can be harnessed to learn more about customers to provide better experiences. All of this creates new opportunities to drive monetisation, develops a better understanding of how teams can work efficiently and drives innovation.

Today Data Management has expanded to encompass solutions that are hosted in the Cloud and enable automation that empowers business leaders to make faster, more informed decisions. As a result, the discipline of data management is a top priority for business executives, not just IT teams.

Frederico Pravatta Rezende, Azure Data Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft shares with IT Integrity the importance of understanding data fundamentals, how organisations can establish a data culture, and the SQL pathways available to attain modern data platforms.

Today, we can capture data from social media, from sensors and from the systems that we have within our enterprises. By combining different types of data from different sources, we’re able to identify patterns that can help us improve our operations.
Frederico Pravatta Rezende, Azure Data Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft

Data fundamentals – the pillars of data practice

For organisations that are starting their data maturity journey, it is important to leverage the right partners. Identify a partner that understands the challenges of your sector and has proven experience in shaping organisational outcomes. Those working with modern data frameworks are becoming more and more strategic to business outcomes. As strategic partners to the business, these partners, individuals and departments need to understand how to best leverage modern data technologies.

Through the tools available, businesses can begin to capture and store data, and transform data of different types, from various sources, into information that can ultimately drive business decisions. Once the technology is understood, it’s all about the database and data flow.

SQL Server is the most used database technology in the world. And today, other technologies can expand these environments to work with new types of data. These can work with any relational and non-relational data that are hosted either on Premises or in the Cloud.
Frederico Pravatta Rezende, Azure Data Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft

Once staff understand how to manage a database and DBA administrators are in place, organisations need to adopt new technologies that grow these environments and transform data into valuable business information. Analytics is key to this growth.

Modern analytics tools in the Microsoft suite of solutions move organisations from a traditional business intelligence environment, which looks at historical data, to technologies that focus on a predictive, prescriptive approach, making them proactive, rather than reactive. Through this transition, a Chief Data Officer, someone that works hand-in-hand with the business leads to contribute and jointly decide how to implement strategies that can help them achieve more.

Establishing a data culture

Data culture is something that needs to first and foremost align with business objectives, as well as future growth plans to increase monetisation, drive better processes, and generate more innovation.

Before establishing a data culture, organisations in the care services industries are going to need to begin by conducting a review of what is already running. This should involve:

Assessing the current environment
Understanding where the gaps are
Identifying which technologies can best help to reach the goals of the business.

Once tools have been identified to support the business goals, companies need to think about how to stop being reactive and start being more proactive towards their customers, their processes, their collaborators, their partners and the way that they create new offers.

To adopt data culture, leave that reactive approach to be proactive, prescriptive and first to adopt strategies that will help to be top-of-mind, and gain more market share. Those that don’t adopt modern analytics technologies will lose their market eventually, or are at a big risk of losing market share if competitors adopt them first.
Frederico Pravatta Rezende, Azure Data Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft

SQL pathways to modern data platforms

There is the platform, and then there are the Microsoft partners. For the platform, customers that are looking to migrate or modernise their SQL Server environments have great options available. With SQL Pathways to the Cloud, even those running older versions of the SQL Server Platform can adopt modern technologies and transform the way they capture, store and interpret data into information. All of which is managed by Microsoft.

Microsoft has SQL Server in Azure, which has a version that is called Azure SQL Database. As the SQL Database is based on a Platform-as-a-Service implementation, it is a fully managed solution. That means that Microsoft is the one that updates it, manages it, patches it.
Frederico Pravatta Rezende, Azure Data Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft

As a Microsoft Partner, IT Integrity works with care services businesses to help understand, migrate and modernise environments to Azure, leaving business leaders free to move into more strategic roles to understand their data and use this information to help drive better business decisions.

With optimal Data Management organisations transform into proactive, innovative organisations, better aligned to the needs of their customers, optimised for growth.

At ITAC2020 Microsoft, IT Integrity and MOQdigital hosted the Executive Data Masterclass.

Our masterclass panellists provided in-industry examples of data platform adoption, proving that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to modernise your data and meet changing compliance standards.

The information presented in the masterclass gave many attendees the confidence to start thinking about their own data strategy, as well as actionable strategies to implement in their businesses.

If you would like to start your journey towards a modern data strategy, you may be interested in IT Integrity’s service Instinct to Insights: Develop a Data Driven Business.

This service for care service organisations offers a roadmap to adopting modern Microsoft data platform and data analytics tools. These tools are the key to efficient data management and data driven decision-making in the care service industry.

How does Instinct to Insights: Develop a Data Driven Business propel care service organisations into modern data management?

IT Integrity can assist you in your adoption of Microsoft SQL as a Service:

You don’t need to upgrade your system
We’ll work with you to understand the data components needed in your organisation
Gain greater operational insights
Ensure your organisation meets baseline compliance and accreditation standards
Start improving resource productivity with actionable reporting

Book your initial data assessment and recommendation workshop with IT integrity

This Microsoft stack is already helping businesses in care services. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to data management. Start making data-driven decisions and improving your operation. Contact IT Integrity today to find out more.

March 11, 2020by Tara ConnollyNews

The Future of Technology in Care Services

Recent years have seen the care services sector undergo a significant change, driven by environmental pressures and the introduction of new capabilities from technology.

Care services specialist, IT Integrity, sat down with WARDY IT Solutions and MOQdigital, long-standing Microsoft Solutions Partners, working across industries to help businesses drive growth through better access to data, to discuss the drastic changes they’ve seen in the way that this technology is used in care services, particularly now as the industry faces new pressures.

Michael Hugo is a Business Development Manager at MOQdigital. In the past two and a half years with MOQdigital, Michael has worked primarily with clients in the aged and health care space, designing solutions to bring their businesses into the future and enable compliance to changing regulations.

WARDY IT Solutions Peter Ward is a long-standing figure in the Australian technology sector, with 15 years of tech consulting experience, working with a variety of clients in the care services industries to design tech solutions for better patient and customer care.

With our collective insight, we discussed technology in care services as it currently stands, where it’s going, how businesses can get there and what the future looks like for CIOs.

Care Services Current Landscape

The care services industry is currently in a state of transformation. In the last few years, there have been changes to NFP statuses, how the NDIS awards funding and the Royal Commission into Aged Care was established. Customers and clients expect services and results within a millisecond, and the agencies of the care services sector are soon to demand the same.

It’s been disrupted, especially from a regulatory compliance perspective and the Aged Care Royal Commission is going to continue to accelerate.
Peter Ward

To provide better care outcomes, organisations need better data. This requires new technology which enables care services providers to be able to access and understand their data. To be compliant with industry changes, care services organisations need frameworks, risk management, and to work with existing solutions that have proven to meet similar needs in the industry.

There are many workflows and automations that can be created to provide care services providers with the peace of mind to let them focus on what their core business is.
Michael Hugo

How Technology is Being Applied in Care Services Today

Technology is an enabler. WARDY IT demonstrates this perfectly in a recent case where they were engaged to examine the cause of morbidity within aged care. They used technology and data insights to understand the issue and make informed decisions to improve patient care.

They knew the primary cause of morbidity in aged care is broken hips. When someone breaks their hip, they lose mobility, which dramatically increases the risk of morbidity. Analysing information about these cases, WARDY IT found that the primary reason for someone breaking their hip was incontinence. These individuals wanted to go to the toilet themselves, they have tried to get out of bed, and as a result, they have fallen and broken their hip.

Using this information, systems were introduced to capture simple data points so that nurses and other staff could share when somebody last went to the bathroom. Data sharing between shifts transformed the care services organisation away from being siloed — where one caregiver provides an isolated service that others are not always aware of, to being holistic — where all staff are aware of the care strategies in place for each patient. Through this, the facility could improve its overall service.

Traditionally, clinical care was something that was the responsibility of the individual practitioner, and that was treated in isolation for one patient. Now we’re rolling that together, allowing us to see data holistically and being able to identify patterns and trends.
Peter Ward

Moving Care Services into the Future

The technology for care services organisations to move forward is already available through Microsoft’s Power BI Dashboards and cloud platform options, which provide a much-needed source of truth for care services data.

Motivated by disruption from a number of different angles; regulatory compliance, the Aged Care Royal Commission, and demand from customers, the care services sector is currently facing significant environmental pressures to adapt, and this new technology presents an opportunity to alleviate some of the challenges.

The immediate future requires care services organisations to:

Learn the importance of data; how to track it, read it, report on it and use it to make better decisions
Implement systems that allow for better communication and ease of reporting
Lean on experts to put these systems in place, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel when best practice is already known.

Microsoft is the provider helping to make this shift. Already the most used provider within the care services industry, Microsoft has been investing heavily in the care services sector. They have a clinical physician that works inside of the business in Australia to help guide them and provide direction and input into product development for the industry.

Microsoft can react and provide solutions that might take competitors years to do. Customers can be a greenfield site, a brownfield site, or have legacy systems, it doesn’t matter because finally, we’ve got this ecosystem and toolset that pretty much can be all things to all people.
Michael Hugo

These tools, whether Power BI, SharePoint, ShareFile, or a CRM system, help care services providers to get a single point of truth with seamless integration, within one ecosystem. Eliminating costly exercises in designing bespoke solutions to make systems connect, these modern data platforms are more cost-effective and efficient, as well as easier to read and report on.

5 Things CIOs Should Consider Today

CIOs will see increased pressure and responsibility for taking care services into the next stage of tech adoption, introducing tools that enable better decision making to increase the quality of care for patients and ensure regulatory compliance.

To effect this change, CIOs need to consider:

How to remain flexible and face environmental pressures (NDIS, data reporting requirements, and the Royal Commission)
How to resolve issues and identify opportunities to improve data use
Reviewing the current underlying technology footprint of their company
How to help the executive team make data decisions with new technology
How to make data a key part of organisational goals and conversation

CIOs are finding ways to use technology as a core pillar of the business to help it find its sustainability and its turnaround.
Michael Hugo

At ITAC2020 Microsoft, IT Integrity and MOQdigital hosted the Executive Data Masterclass.

Our masterclass panellists provided in-industry examples of data platform adoption, proving that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to modernise your data and meet changing compliance standards.

We believe the information presented in the masterclass gave many attendees the confidence to start thinking about their own data strategy, as well as actionable strategies to implement in their businesses.