Salesforce Health Cloud — To implement or not to implement?

Health Cloud, Salesforce’s newest venture into industry solutions on its ever-evolving platform, might be its most impactful solution yet. With Health Cloud and Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Mulesoft, Salesforce is looking to bring integrations and cloud-based solutions to address care gaps that have long existed within the healthcare vertical. The days of disparate Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions and lack of transparency across the continuum of care are coming to an end.

Health Cloud provides a variety of use cases in which the platform could be applicable. The consistent message, however, is that Health Cloud assists in enhancing data exchanges and visibility for all parties involved. Providing contact centers with the ability to access data within an EMR allows a customer service representative to service a patient with the best tools available on hand. Since Health Cloud licenses are an add-on to Salesforce Service Cloud capabilities, Health Cloud implementations provide standard Service Cloud capabilities such as Omnichannel, Knowledge, and Live Agent to an industry where EMR capabilities have long been the core focus for enhancements.

If your organization is investigating implementations of Health Cloud, here are some key topics to consider:

Bringing a CRM to the healthcare industry alongside an EMR

Many customers unrealistically expect a single system to be the solution for all their challenges. From its inception, Salesforce has relied on a robust partner/vendor ecosystem to deliver solutions for its customers, and Health Cloud is no different. Salesforce’s Health Cloud is not targeted at doctors who require the functionalities of an EMR, but more so at the support staff that surrounds a patient. From allowing a caregiver to easily record activities that a patient has completed, to displaying existing appointments to a customer service representative, Health Cloud is focused on managing a patient’s interactions rather than their chart.

It is important to understand your use cases for investing in Health Cloud prior to proceeding with your implementation. There are important factors an architect must consider when implementing Health Cloud, primarily the amount and structure of data being migrated from an existing EMR to Health Cloud. Consider the audience of the data that you are trying to display in Health Cloud:

• Do you plan to send an appointment reminder to a patient?
• Do you expect a customer service representative to analyze lab results to book an appointment?

Focus on an Integrations Architecture Strategy

When investigating Health Cloud, it’s important for an organization to identify the pre-existing data endpoints in their current technological infrastructure. ­ While Health Cloud is a powerful tool, all system implementations are limited by the data that can be surfaced to an end user. It is imperative to determine how you will get the data from an EMR or multiple EMRs, into Salesforce. Questions to consider include:

• Does your organization have an HL7 interface engine?

Organizations need to keep in mind that while all interface engines have integration capabilities, they often do not meet the requirements needed to support an enterprise level integration strategy.

• Does your organization have an Enterprise Service Bus that will be able to communicate the data between an EMR and Salesforce?

Many data exchanges are designed in a point-to-point integration strategy. While this strategy can work, it is not optimal and will require a re-design as your organization matures and more systems are implemented. Many hospital systems are relying on acquisitions to grow a network. These acquisitions often introduce new EMRs and tools to consider for a Patient 360 view, which are the primary use cases for investing in an ESB tool.

• Does your organization have the right team members to support an ESB?

Rely on your internal technical teams to understand the existing applications and data that may already be referenced from your EMR. There may be an existing mobile application that uses the same web services required for Health Cloud, so it is important to understand how the data is designed.

Conversely, if there needs to be a new web service built to get additional data from the EMR, does your internal team have the skillset to facilitate this?

Is Health Cloud worth the Investment?

As a Salesforce Solutions Architect, I believe that Health Cloud is worth the investment for an organization. Salesforce has dedicated a lot of resources in ensuring the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry vertical is successful. The acquisition of Mulesoft to boost integrations in Health Cloud ensures that future enhancements are on the roadmap, with immediate use cases to support and increase referral management and order verification between hospitals.

Unlike many industries, the healthcare ecosystem is focused on interoperability standards that benefit processes and systems. Many of the accelerators and tools developed in the Salesforce ecosystem will be quick to market and help the industry mature faster than seen before.

As with any new product, there will always be limitations and gaps in the initial product; however, Salesforce has demonstrated that it has the necessary tools and focus to deliver a great patient and provider experience in the near future.