Healthcare providers improve patient care and outcomes using AWS Marketplace

The healthcare industry is in a state of rapid change. As providers continue their ongoing digital transformation, they face numerous challenges in their quest to give patients and caregivers an improved experience. These challenges include:

• IT evolution – Healthcare organizations can use new data analysis tools to collect, process, and analyze massive amounts of patient data. These tools enable organizations to give their patients an end-to-end, integrated digital experience.
• Digital era challenges – Preexisting challenges in the digital era include aging populations, chronic conditions, cost pressures, and regulatory environment. There are also emerging challenges with COVID-19 and the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator (COVAX). Additionally, there are talent shortages, a rise in consumerism, and new cyberthreats.
• Intelligence in action – Improved aggregation, integration, and orchestration of data can be used to improve patient outcomes, resulting in a shift from data-rich to data-driven healthcare.

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog offering solutions to help healthcare organizations enhance patient care, lower costs, and improve patient outcomes. These solutions are purpose-built to help healthcare organizations enhance patient care, lower costs, and improve patient experiences throughout the continuum of care.

In this blog post, I show examples of solutions that improve the patient experience that healthcare providers found and deployed through AWS Marketplace.

Magee Rehabilitation Hospital uses Alexa for Smart Hospitals from Aiva Health to improve patient care

Magee Rehabilitation Hospital (Magee Rehab) specializes in physical and cognitive rehabilitation services for brain injury, stroke, spinal cord injury, orthopedic replacement, amputation, and pain management. The facility owner, Jefferson Health, recently installed a new voice-assistant system in all 83 patient recovery rooms at Magee Rehab.

“Many patients don’t have the ability to physically interact with the features in their hospital room,” explains Jeff Brown, Director of IT Strategy at Jefferson Health. “Our strategy was to give them a better healthcare experience through greater independence. We needed a voice-assistant system that would be simple for patients to use while also helping us to automate hospital workflows and protect patient confidentiality.”

The new in-room system at Magee Rehab uses Amazon Alexa for Hospitality, powered by the Aiva Health and Alexa Smart Properties. This system interacts with the hospital’s Building Management System (BMS) to activate the patient’s voice commands. These might include:

• Adjust room features: “Alexa, turn off the lights.” “Alexa, raise the temperature.”
• Play relaxation music: “Alexa, play jazz radio.” “Alexa, play sleep sounds.”
• Get answers to simple hospital-related questions: “Alexa, what are the visiting hours?” “Alexa, where is the gift shop?”

“Some vocal commands get pretty nuanced,” says Brown. “During our initial rollout, a nurse at the hospital was performing a simple procedure, when she realized that the overhead task light was not turned on. Since her hands were sanitized, she told the patient that she needed to go get another nurse to turn the light on for her. The patient said out loud, ‘Alexa, turn on the exam light.’ And it came on. That’s when we realized that our overall success was in the simplicity of using the hands-free voice assistant.”

A cancer-care provider uses The Clinician’s ZEDOC platform to tailor chemotherapy sessions to patients

The Clinician is a specialist in healthcare IT solutions. Using The Clinician’s AI-driven ZEDOC platform, providers now securely collect health data directly from patients in the comfort of their own homes. Analysis of this data helps physicians understand how patients are doing, enabling them to deliver more personalized treatment and prioritize urgent care. By making ZEDOC available to providers through AWS Marketplace, The Clinician can deliver digital healthcare on a global scale and grow across multiple regions.

A cancer-care provider in Brisbane, Australia, uses the ZEDOC platform to monitor post-chemotherapy side effects for lung cancer patients. ZEDOC sends a weekly questionnaire via an embedded link, and a short message in an SMS, asking patients to report on 12 key chemo-related symptoms following treatment. Their responses help the provider to tailor the patient’s post-therapy modifications, or modify the patient’s next chemotherapy session accordingly.

Healthcare provider reduces standard infection ratio from an average of seven to one using Huron Rounding

Huron Consulting helps healthcare organizations manage operational, digital, and cultural transformation. Huron Rounding solution, offered through AWS Marketplace, enables providers to collect and aggregate patient data based on specific questions. This helps providers build relationships and improve patient satisfaction, while also giving them a faster way to identify and manage patient care issues. For example, one healthcare provider reduced their CLABSI Standardized Infection Ratio (SIR) from an average of seven to one month-over-month. Using the Huron Rounding solution not only helped caregivers to improve provider outcomes, but also increased employee engagement and satisfaction. The improvement also eliminated potential for penalties up to $3.46M annually.

Next steps

To learn more about AWS Marketplace healthcare solutions and outcomes, check out this webinar on innovative approaches to patient engagement. It was hosted by Michael Leonard, Global Healthcare Category Lead, AWS Marketplace, and featured Jeff Brown, Director of IT Strategy at Jefferson Health.

About the author

Michael Leonard is responsible for growing the AWS Marketplace healthcare vertical business. His previous role was as a Principal Product Manager on the AWS Storage Gateway team. Over the past 20 years, Michael has progressed through a variety of roles in business development, product management, and engineering at AWS, Commvault, Iron Mountain, Merge Healthcare, and GE Healthcare. He built and managed teams to develop Healthcare IT solutions focused on medical imaging, Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, hybrid cloud storage services, and data protection solutions.​