Microsoft Azure-based solution digitally transforms healthcare operations, saving time and resources
Elly Yates-Roberts |
Singapore-based clinics such as Kong Dental Surgery and The Medical Practice are removing paper and queues from their daily procedures with Assurance Technology. The Microsoft Azure-based Clinic Assist system is digitally transforming healthcare operations, saving time and resources.
Healthcare is “still in a relatively primitive state compared to some areas of manufacturing or other sectors,” said Christopher Bishop, director of the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, in a recent episode of The Microsoft Research Podcast. As an industry, it is known for being resistant to change, but it also has the potential to reap huge benefits from digital transformation.
“Keeping medical records on paper is a laborious and time-consuming process,” said Karina Kho, resident doctor at The Medical Practice. “When required, our staff would always need to spend a significant amount of time taking the cards in and out of the drawer, which was very inefficient. Hence, we were looking for a solution that could enable us to streamline our processes and enhance the overall patient experience.
“Assurance Technology was very well-known in the market for providing technology expertise for medical clinics like us. With physical records being increasingly harder to manage over time, we decided to take the step forward to work with Assurance Technology to digitally transform our processes by using their Clinic Assist clinic management software built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.”
By building Clinic Assist on Microsoft Azure, Assurance Technology ensures its customers will be safely secured, while their customers will have ownership over their respective data.
Since adopting Clinic Assist, Kong Dental Surgery has reaped benefits including increased operational efficiency and improved communication between clinics.
“With Clinic Assist being built on the cloud, we have since streamlined our call centre operations where one receptionist is able to look at the four different appointment books for our four dental clinics to find available appointment slots,” said Dr Gloria Kong, director of Kong Dental Group. “This saves customers the trouble of having to call the clinics separately, as well as help reduce the amount of manpower required to manage appointment booking across our clinics.”
The Medical Practice were also able to save patients’ time by implementing a digital queue system via their mobile app.
“Our patients can simply download a mobile app to request a queue number for medical consultation, while receiving real-time updates on the number of patients that remain in the queue, to know when to head down to the clinic,” said Kho. “Rather than sitting in a long line at the clinic to wait for their turn, this makes the queue process more efficient as patients can make more effective use of their time.”