What is Wellness Technology? Wellness is the science of promoting health through technological systems. This includes but is not limited to electronic health records (EHR), computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, work wearable, wellness information management systems, medical billing and claims processing systems, home health care services, hospice and palliative care. Some of these technologies are almost ubiquitous and often considered normal health equipment. However, health is a complex system that must be managed on an organizational level and wellness technology helps to do this. It provides for the creation of a culture of health at the organization and encourages individuals to adopt healthy lifestyles.
The purpose of employee wellness programs is to create a productive, healthy, value-added workforce by reducing absenteeism, enhancing worker-owner engagement, and increasing worker productivity. The implementation of wellness technology in organizations has accelerated the pace of change and increased the profitability of companies that offer health programs. Wellness practices create a healthy work environment where employees can experience an open and honest dialogue about health risks and improve their work performance. Wellness technology gives organizations the infrastructure to effectively identify the individual health risk factors of staff so that organizations can develop and provide health programs to support, motivate, engage, and incentivize employees (and their families) in various healthy behaviors.
The vendor community is leveraging its market position, expertise, and portfolio to promote wellness technology to healthcare providers. Vendors are using the well-known and relatively inexpensive platform to extend health management solutions to their customer base. The vendors are creating new markets and driving growth in existing markets.
The healthcare delivery environment is recognizing the value of well-built, user-friendly enterprise solutions that bring together business value and medical practice improvements. Health IT teams are leveraging the value and power of their existing platforms and investing in new capabilities to increase patient connectivity. Wellness application developers are developing easy-to-use, scalable, secure, and cost-effective wellness management solutions for physicians and other direct patient care professionals. The development and integration of wellness technology into existing systems are dramatically improving workflow processes and reducing redundant workload. The combination of well-proven applications with solid customer and technical support continues to drive down the cost of healthcare services.
Health Tech
Another challenge facing wellness programs is integration challenges. Traditional software architecture has been slow to evolve to accept new technologies, test data, and perform analytics on the cloud. Businesses need to address challenges around data integration, access, billing, and analytics to ensure that their internal and external data meets the strategic objectives of the organization. Wellness Management platforms have the ability to easily integrate with multiple on-premise and third-party applications. Wellness management software provides businesses with full-featured integration capabilities to quickly address the growing needs of their organization.
As the health care industry continues to mature and move toward more sustainable models of care, technology vendors are going to continue to be a key part of the solution process. Health care organizations today depend upon the intelligence that well-designed platforms provide to provide them with information that allows them to make sound decisions that will improve patient care. It is critical to partner with a technology vendor that can provide a complete solution for wellness management solutions and continue to drive the business forward.
