Shreya Patel
Chief Innovation & Product Officer, ELLKAY
What does innovation in Health IT mean to you?
Disruptive yet carefully curated growth in technology that empowers all caretakers to collaborate and care for their patients with complete patient data. This approach to innovation again is challenging yet very powerful as it incubates new ideas and technology that completely changes the experience for patients and providers and the cost of healthcare.
What made you become involved in healthcare technology?
Healthcare technology is decades behind compared to other industries in many perspectives. Providers and patient centric organizations focus predominantly on patient care and patient safety, ultimately limiting their input in solving technology challenges. I like to view this as a responsibility for individuals who understand both technology and the importance of healthcare innovation. It’s time to ensure that patient care delivery is enhanced and powered by true innovation and has an easy yet robust, secure pathway for everyone in healthcare to collaborate. I have a passion for innovation. I want to help fulfill the need for new, powerful, easy to use, cutting edge technology in our market and introduce value-focused solutions, ultimately reducing healthcare costs.
How are current trends in Health IT impacting your organization?
The current trend around the adoption of interoperability is almost parallel with ELLKAY’s mission and interoperability solution. It focuses on the central idea of collaboration and interoperability between payers, providers, and patients. It has been our vision since 2011 to drive interoperability throughout the continuum with our interoperability solution. We are very well positioned to empower our customers and partners to embrace this new trend, using our solutions to capitalize on the true power of patient data at the point of care.
What changes would you like to see in health IT?
I would like to see an increase in data quality which can be achieved through complete data sharing through true interoperability. At the same time, I would like to see an exponential growth of technology through innovation and an overall reduction of healthcare costs through disruptive innovation and data driven healthcare.
How do you ensure your organization is keeping up with the continual advances in technology?
ELLKAY is an innovation-centered IT company. We pay close attention to technology and the needs of the providers, caretakers, and the market. As a healthcare technology vendor, our goal is to continually evaluate existing, new, and upcoming technologies and the impact on the end-users, the cost to the market, and identify what else we can do to advance and disrupt a market. Our R&D and innovation teams ensure that we stay true to the necessary advancement within our solutions. Their goal is to bring disruptive technology to market aggressively and to stay ahead for our partners.
What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing leaders in the healthcare sector?
The speed at which technology is adopted into health systems and the impact it has on the ultimate end users – providers and patients. Succeeding with interoperability always sounds like the biggest challenge, but at ELLKAY, I am excited and proud of the collaboration we enable between providers, payers, and patients.
What is the most rewarding part about being in the healthcare industry?
The ability to impact patient care through innovative technology. It gives me great pleasure to see how the overall healthcare experience is improved for providers, patients, and our partners from having complete patient data available at the point of care and the true interoperability that happens through using our solutions.