#AGILEHEALTH
A CSC HEALTHCARE POINT OF VIEW
AGILE HEALTH
PATIENT-CENTRIC CARE IN THE MODERN HEALTHCARE ENVIRONMENT
Medicine is changing, and the provision of healthcare is changing with it.
Patients are increasingly making more-informed choices and managing their
own health. Successful healthcare providers need to respond to changing
patient needs and preferences with new, more-effective models of care.
CSC’s Agile Health strategy will help you transform your IT organization so
you can achieve the flexibility and efficiency you need to deliver more
patient-centric care in the future.
New Models of Care Need
New Models of IT
Advances in medical science, combined
with rapidly changing patient
expectations, mean that healthcare
providers are facing a period of sustained
change. Add to that a pressing need to
contain healthcare costs in the face of
increasing demand, and it is clear that
this change needs to be both
fundamental and transformational.
Recognizing that stepwise improvements
will not be enough to keep pace,
healthcare providers across the world are
adopting new models of care. These
models focus as much on population
health as they do on treating individual
illness. The new models of care that will
characterize the next 50 years of
healthcare will require ever-more
sophisticated systems to enable them.
Three Drivers of
Transformational Change
Advances in Medical Science. Medical
science is advancing rapidly. At an
individual level, low-cost genomic
profiling paves the way for precision
medicine, using targeted and
personalized therapies. At a broader
population level, sophisticated analytics
allow physicians to predict patterns of
disease and, more crucially, to predict an
individual’s health trajectory. These new
analytics approaches will be fed by the
huge amount of personal health data
being built up, not only in healthcare
providers’ systems, but also through
individual patient input such as personal
wearable devices. In addition, other
unstructured data sources, including
retail, social media and travel, will help
provide powerful insights.
Changing Demographics, Lifestyles and
Disease Patterns. Demographic data
predicts a rapid increase in the
population aged 60 years or older. The
rate of change is greatest in moredeveloped regions but is significant
everywhere in the world. This both drives
demand for and changes the nature of
healthcare. As populations age, chronic
condition management and end-of-life
care become increasingly important. A
single example demonstrates the shift: In
the UK, experts suggest that one-third of
the population is pre-diabetic, and
estimate diabetes care could account for
17% of health costs in the next 30 years.
The Rise of the Informed Consumer.
Increasingly, health is being seen as
a “lifestyle” option, and individuals
expect to engage with their healthcare
provider in the same way they engage
with other consumer goods suppliers. At
a base level, this means they will demand
social and mobile access to providers.
More profoundly, we will see patients
becoming more proactive, seeking to
make informed decisions about their
conditions and treatment through
personal research and engagement
with peer communities.
Toward a Coordinated, Patient-centric
Healthcare Ecosystem
Better therapies, increased life
expectancy and more engaged patients
are clearly a good thing. However, with
citizens living longer, it is predicted that
healthcare spending will be everexpanding. Even with data from the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) showing that
the growth in health spending is slowing,
nations are seeing record high
percentages of gross domestic product
(GDP) spent on healthcare. In many
economies, efforts to “bend” the
healthcare cost curve are accelerating.
AGILE HEALTH
In response, healthcare providers need to
adopt new models. These models will have
two defining characteristics: They will focus
on promoting and propagating health rather
than treating disease, and they will be built
around care pathways that coordinate
personalized care across the complete
continuum of personal health, social care
and therapeutic venues.
Effective IT will be at the heart of the
changes providers need to make. Clinicians,
administrators and patients need better
information if they are to make better
decisions, but the new models of care will
also require new systems and processes.
The Chief Innovation Officer —
CIOs as Critical Change Agents
A recent CSC survey found that nearly half
of healthcare CIOs think legacy applications
are hindering innovation, and two-thirds
identify modernization as a key priority.
Typically, too much time is spent running the
operation, rather than responding to new
possibilities. The survey also found that
budget constraints are a key challenge.
Forward-looking CIOs are seeking to
rebalance their organizations, achieving more
innovation at the same or reduced cost.
With the move to a coordinated, patientcentric ecosystem underpinned by agile and
effective IT, it is vital that the CIO become a
key driver of business change, championing
innovation and enabling transformation.
CSC identifies three key areas of focus
for CIOs:
Agile IT as a Service. Increase organizational
flexibility, agility and responsiveness, while
reducing costs by:
• Simplifying and standardizing operating
environments
• Using cost-optimized, multitenanted
commodity IT services
• Embracing consumer-focused social and
mobile technologies
eHealth Optimization. Maximize the value
of eHealth investments and enable staff to
focus on clinical and operational
innovation by:
• Minimizing the overhead of legacy
applications, freeing up resources to drive
innovation and transformational change
• Increasing clinical integration and
relevance, improving clinical outcomes
• Efficiently implementing new electronic
health record (EHR) systems
and functionality
Working with a large U.S. academic
healthcare provider, CSC is helping optimize
IT spending and resources, rationalizing and
operating legacy clinical and financial
applications while transitioning to a new
EHR system.
Population Health Enablement. Improve
patient outcomes and integrate care pathways across system boundaries by:
• Converging population data across
multiple health settings and pathways
The Triple Aim of
Healthcare Reform
The Institute for Healthcare
Improvement (IHI) has
developed a framework that
describes an approach to
optimizing health systems.
IHI believes that new
designs must be developed
to simultaneously pursue
three dimensions:
• Improving the patient
experience of care
(including quality and
satisfaction)
• Improving the health of
populations
• Reducing the per-capita
cost of healthcare
Find out more about the IHI
Triple Aim at:
www.ihi.org/tripleaim.
• Optimizing clinical decision making with
analytics-based insights into populationwide health management
• Engaging with patients in diverse
care settings through multiple
communications channels
• Supporting the transition to
value-based commissioning and
reimbursement models
Working with a healthcare commissioning
group in the UK, CSC has been selected to
deliver a first-of-its-kind Patient Care
Coordination Center, serving the needs of
more than 200,000 health consumers.
Transforming for the Future
New models of IT provide a platform for
innovative and effective new models of care.
With global experience across multiple
industries, established expertise and a
next-generation technology focus, CSC can
work with you to deliver innovation together.
Working with a U.S.-based integrated
healthcare system, CSC is transforming the
IT infrastructure with CSC Agility Platform™,
optimizing workloads across development,
testing and production environments.
© 2015 Computer Sciences Corporation. All rights reserved. Creative Services BR7586h-16 April 2015
There’s No “Business as
Usual” Anymore
CIOs need to adapt in order
to survive and thrive. Key
issues include:
• Optimizing CAPEX and
OPEX budgets for
maximum efficiency
• Transforming infrastructure for effectiveness
and efficiency
• Ensuring cybersecurity in
an increasingly connected environment
• Engaging with patients,
clinicians and populations
digitally and socially
• Investing in innovation
while running the business
• Ensuring that investments
are fit for the future
ÞÞ Learn more at csc.com/healthcare.