IDSolutions: Telehealth Integration Like No Other

Tracy Mills, Founder & President

While many are focused on the “hows” concerning technology’s contribution to the healthcare sector, it’s more reasonable to discuss the specific “whats.” Despite numerous technology topics in the Healthcare arena, Telehealth is something that almost every incumbent of the landscape wishes to leverage. Patient-provider connectivity, secure accessibility and healthcare access to the most remote locations are only a small sample of benefits the technology brings in. One firm that brings a sense of inquisitiveness in this regard is Indiana-based IDSolutions. For this “global video integration company” that provides custom solutions across a number of different industries, it is interesting to note that technology takes the back seat. “We’ve been in visual communications forever. Our observations on the insufficient utilization of this technology led us to leverage Telehealth in a way that it has become the largest part of our business today,” notes the firm’s President and founder, Tracy Mills.

Although the market is not deprived of other telehealth solutions, Mills informs that most are standalone solutions that operate independently of the other systems that are often major components in a healthcare provider’s ecosystem. In such instances, Telehealth becomes the disruptor of the very workflow it is supposed to accentuate by seamlessly integrating with. Another effect of the technology’s evolution is the rise in the number of systems and device platforms. This leads to the challenge of secured data exchange in accordance with compliances such as the HIPAA and HL7.

Our aim, at all times, remains to enhance the efficiency and scalability of Telehealth capabilities, enabling it to be done anywhere, anytime in a diverse, disparate environment

Terming his firm’s approach as “overarching”, Mills states that IDSolutions integrates best-of-breed technologies to create and implement a Telehealth enabled workflow that is specific to a client’s unique needs. “By bringing all the systems together, we ensure that providers don’t need to log into multiple systems at one time. Our aim, at all times, remains to enhance the efficiency and scalability of telehealth capabilities, enabling it to be done anywhere, anytime in a diverse, disparate environment.”

An additional limitation of the majority of currently available solutions is the lack of two-way interactive communication between a care provider and other stakeholders like a patient. To highlight his firm’s stand in this regard, Mills exemplifies an Ohio-based healthcare institution--Akron Children’s Hospital. Since associating with IDSolutions, the hospital has moved beyond the struggle to manage efficient communications with the parents of pediatric patients, such as those with autism, for whom hours-long drives are not viable. With Telehealth they are now delivering quality care to patients all across the state.

Citing the numerous strategic partnerships, IDSolutions has formed with different solution providers in the arena, Mills clarifies that the strength is not in being partners with everybody. “It’s in selecting the right partners and conducting an interoperability assessment that ensures that one platform complements, not hamper the other. He stresses that while in terms of other non-patient facing technology, it can be acceptable for a particular system to malfunction, but for healthcare it’s a matter of life and death.

Reaffirming his firm’s core beliefs, Mills makes a note that technology at IDSolutions always ranks second to its efficient, experienced team. The fact that IDSolutions recently ranked the fifth best place to work in the state of Indiana corroborates the firm’s culture of employee satisfaction equaling the success of an organization. “For us, the focus has always been about the people involved and shaping the underlying processes in a way that serves them best.”