Integrating AI, ML, and RPA, into the healthcare industry, has shifted towards a patient-centric approach. Has it made Healthtech efficient?
1. Can you tell us more about yourself and your journey at CareCloud?
I am a medical doctor by profession. I have work experience in medicine, ICU, surgery, and OBGYN. My journey with CareCloud started in 2014 as a Medical Coordinator for their in-house medical room. In 2016, I was given the opportunity to explore the US healthcare system and work with electronic health records. CareCloud was launching its new generation talkEHR with the health industry’s first voice assistant and AI-driven platform. After the successful launch, we started looking into more technical robust solutions for the healthcare industry. Blockchain technology and robotic process automation are to name a few. In 2020, I moved to the telehealth department, which we now call our digital health platform CareCloud Wellness.
2. Could you tell us more about CareCloud and how the company has evolved over the last couple of years?
CareCloud, formerly known as MTBC, started its operations in 1999 as a billing company. As the company grew, it evolved in providing healthcare solutions like EHR and other healthcare solutions facilitating both healthcare providers and patients. This includes practice management systems, web based and mobile clinical health record management, complete revenue cycle management, workforce extension, automated processing system, and telehealth services. With the strategic acquisition of some companies like CareCloud and Meridian, CareCloud’s product portfolio of solutions includes the business intelligence tool PrecisionBI and Connector. Recently under the umbrella of Wellness, CareCloud started providing end-to-end services like chronic care management (CCM) and remote patient monitoring (RPM).
3. What’s your favorite part about working in this industry?
Since integrating advanced technologies, such as AI, ML, and RPA, into the healthcare industry, it has shifted towards a patient-centric approach. Artificial intelligence (AI) makes everything possible, and automation focuses on decreasing routine work processing time, saving physicians time and energy. Now, healthcare individuals can use their energy on critical tasks, such as patient-focused care delivery. We have also evidenced the revolution of healthcare.
Digitalization implies a significant effect on the ease of getting frequent medical assistance.Honestly, there is no limit to the endless things we can achieve using technology.When we provide a technical solution, it makes a significant improvement in medical care delivery. Being part of the process of implementing better healthcare enriches me.
I look forward to playing a significant role in improving care delivery globally.
4. What are the products and solutions that CareCloud offers?
CareCloud offers a solution for one-provider practice to multi-care hospitals. CareCloud’s solutions vary to flexibly fit in both larger and smaller practices. We offer all cloud-based solutions, customizable to the healthcare facility, compatible to market.
Concierge is our revenue cycle management system, which balances the medical coding, billing and ensures practice’s revenues are stable. Breeze is our patient experience system that is built with sole approach to make healthcare transparent and approachable to every patient.
As mentioned earlier, PrecisionBI is our health analytics management system. It’s built chart and report healthcare data for preventive healthcare using AI/ML technologies. Central is our practice management system that fully capable of integration with other vendor’s software as well as with all CareCloud’s software.
Our electronic health records – Charts is the most famous and has been acknowledged by KLAS, SoftwareAdvice, and GetApp. HIPAA compliant and encrypted Telehealth system is built to increase patient accountability and patient experience.
Apart from these we have a robotic processing automation software and workforce extension systems (Force) that aim to reduce practice’s workload through eliminating redundant tasks.
You can visit https://www.carecloud.com/solutions/ to request a free demo and discuss with our experts to choose the right fit.
5. Could you please share your EHR software handling experience in clinical reporting tools & patient engagement?
CareCloud’s EHR software was built after in-depth market analysis. Many factors were put to thought like cost of the software, physicians’ payable cost, upgradation facilities, personalization depending on type of practice, specialty, patient and caregiver interfaces, and automation and interoperability factors that we envisioned will make way in future.
CareCloud is blessed to have a team of futuristic approach and like-minded people who constantly find new approaches to benefit accurate clinical reporting and patient’s satisfaction.
6. How do blockchain and AI technology help secure patient data while providing digital health solutions?
Blockchain uses decentralized systems through which data is protected. In blockchain, cryptographic techniques are utilized to secure healthcare data. Artificial intelligence uses machine learning techniques to scan large databases and detect malicious activities and software codes.
Al technology has a pivotal role in digital transformation of clinical practice, from regular visits to effective digital health provision. With new digitalized solutions, adaptability was the concern of physicians but data confidentiality was the main concern of patients. So, we built an encrypted technology solution that gives complete data security to both patients and caregivers.
This is why our solutions are highly adaptable for everyone.
Another benefit we added is taking off the extra cost from physician’s shoulders. Hence, we added a care team to assist throughout the integration process. These people help all non-tech-savvy professionals in getting onboard with our solutions.
To overcome these add-on operational expenses, Al will significantly help us. Moreover, with our solutions, we provide fundamental population health matrices to the providers so they can make the right decision at the right time.
7. How do you look at increased use of telehealth care and remote monitoring of patients in the post-pandemic era?
We initiated our telehealth initiatives before the pandemic. We are very vocal about this, and all the trends suggest that telehealth will be just the e-commerce of medicine. It is intuitive, easy, and effective. Remote patient monitoring started as part of telehealth and is evolving as a new era of monitoring patients for better prognosis. The best part is it engages and sensitizes the main stakeholder, the patient, in the care. It gives clinics and patients more visual and data-driven markers to make care decisions.
8. What are your views on changing the mindsets and making other physicians more open to technology and its potential?
Technology invaded every industry long ago, and we predicted the healthcare innovations. However, healthcare industry was always rigid in integrating technology due to delicate patient data in hand. A physician’s primary goal is to treat the patient, but there is no denying in the importance of medical record keeping. Digital solutions ease this data management.
The advancement in healthcare sector was long seen, and Covid-19 brought a paradigm shift in changing healthcare delivery through technology. Its not wrong to say that technology unleashes healthcare potential. There are many complexities in handling software and managing several workflows. Physician burnout is the result of these issues. But with new advancements in areas like artificial intelligence, better infrastructure, and government initiatives to facilitate data-driven remote patient care, many of these problems will be resolved.
CareCloud has always been committed to bringing simpler solutions to healthcare. We introduced optical character recognition (OCR) and then automated bots to manage various hospital routine paperwork, and entry processing. Allison, our first voice-enabled artificial intelligence platform, is another example of the use of technology in healthcare. People like Alexa and Siri are very familiar with voice assistants, so working with Allison was a breeze.
9. What are CareCloud’s plans for expansion and growth? Where do you see it in the coming years?
We are committed to bringing the latest technology, focusing on next-generation certified EHR and digital health. Covid has reshaped several things we were doing in the past. As I mentioned, telehealth will stay for longer; it is a norm to have fully integrated telehealth with digital health modalities like chronic care management and remote patient monitoring. Implementing all these programs in the integrated platform is an efficient and sustainable business model in the coming years.
Also, with Medicare’s recent regulations and constantly modifying technologies, our solutions need to evolve as well. In the next decade, we aim to upgrade our technologies and find ways to simplify these technological solutions for practice owners and patients.
10. What movie/book has inspired you recently?
My all-time favorite is Khalid Hussaini’s book, The Kite Runner, and James Frey’s a million little pieces. It inspires me to think about what kindness can do to one-person life and what is happening in the world around us. Recently, I watched an animated movie, “coco,” with my kids. The graphics, wild imagination, attention to detail, and story were inspiring. Its fascinating to watch that movie makers are introducing emotions in animated characters as well. This will teach our younger generation the value of human relations and emotions. The film is a delightful musical, but the colors, multiverse concepts, and thoughtful explanations of various dimensions are fascinating. I believe, our world is getting desensitized over time, and such thought-provoking films are worth watching.
11. What motivates you to get up every morning? What do you take pride in when it comes to your company?
The sense of playing an important role and learning something new keeps me going every day. CareCloud has been my second home for the past eight years, and we are very proud of whatever we did as an innovative team. CareCloud’s unique approach to trying new solutions and working on any new technology or concepts is my driving force. Everyone in CareCloud is always open to new ideas that stand out in the healthcare industry. We start with a vision, and our expert technical team of data scientists spends day and night making that a reality. We have many successful projects in our portfolio and are excited about many more to come in the future.
Visit AITechPark for cutting-edge Tech Trends around AI, ML, Cybersecurity, along with AITech News, and timely updates from industry professionals!
Iram Fatima
COO, CareCloud
As COO of EHR and Telehealth at CareCloud, Dr. Iram is responsible for the global operations of the company. She brings more than 9 years of experience in EMR/EHR Implementation and management. She is a Dr who prefers actions with tangible results rather than promises and words. As a holder of a Bachelor’s degree in MBBS and Certification in leadership principles from Harvard Business School, Dr. Iram holds the basic tenets of project development in order to produce tangible results based on planning realistic goals and action plans. Functioning as an operations manager of EHR and Telehealth at CareCloud, she didn’t just meet goals but exceeded them month in and month out. Dr. Iram works with physicians and IT teams to drive operations of Telehealth and EHR and ensure seamless integrations.
