By K Bhaskhar, Senior Vice President, Business Imaging Solutions (BIS), Canon India
Digitization and technological innovations are two constants that have always added value to mankind at large, even before COVID hit our lives. Digital transformation has perhaps been instrumental for many companies as they grappled with the fast-paced and ever-changing business environment. Organizations and services across sectors recovering from the catastrophic impact of COVID-19, have adapted to the new normal, what some call the ‘online way’ or have chosen online tools to continue their businesses.
It became imperative for organizations – from Schools to SMEs to Banks and even healthcare service providers to digitally transform to be able to operate effectively. In fact, organizations that will use technology to maximize their operations and rethink their business model for the future by fast-tracking digital transformation would be the ones ahead of the curve.
As the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across sectors, the impact on the healthcare sector was the most severe as it rose to the challenge of becoming humanity’s savior. Even before COVID-19,the healthcare sector was under strain; but in 2020 it became the epicenter of this unprecedented global pandemic. The changed world has ushered in an era of contact less transactions which extends to office printing as well.
The sector has been witnessing multiple challenges starting from additional manpower, adequate equipment to eventual treatment of patients. The healthcare industry now is in dire need of smart technologies and solutions that can help to mitigate the impact of pandemic.
Moving ahead as new tools take hold, having the right infrastructure to support high performance computing is paramount. Instead of halting services due to unavailability of staff in these troublesome times, healthcare sector can look at adopting office automation to ease their day-to-day operations. Automating the manual intensive rule-based processes can enable in reducing the burden on the available staff. Hence, they can be re-assigned for more supportive, strategic, and value-adding services.
Creation of digital health records: An important aspect is managing and storing data which is important, and hospitals must see that the wealth of information they possess is well documented. With the government emphasizing on the importance of maintaining digital health records, automation plays a crucial role in taking healthcare services to the next level. After all, minor errors in analyzing medical history can cause serious inconveniences to patients and can trigger heavy repercussions. With office automation, such information can be retrieved much faster, easier and with fewer errors.
A key component of office automation solutions –scanners; combined with cloud storage solutions can help the healthcare sector in their digitization requirements – wherein they can scan the documents and save them on the cloud for easy access and retrieve from anywhere, anytime. Additionally, digitization of health records along with having a robust document management system also ensures security of the data and maintaining confidentiality of the patients.
Saving time and resources: Automation helps to replace the intensive tasks that are better done seamlessly by machines, saving both manpower and time. It would further drive efficiency in hospitals during the present situation as limited staff has been a growing concern since the breakout. Using automation would elevate manual task into higher-functioning roles to make use of the clinical expertise that they are trained for. Besides, office automation is an efficient way to get rid of the huge pile of documents that occupies a good stretch of hospital space. There are various cloud-based document management platforms available that will allow access of data from anywhere, anytime. As they are cloud based, they do not require any space onsite.
Quality of work: Lastly, adoption of office automation enhances and ensures better quality of work produced with utmost consistency. It also ensures that every action is performed identically – resulting in high quality and reliable results.
With the world being at the apex of next digital revolution, it is safe to say that office automation products like scanners along with document management solutions are excellent solutions to aid the healthcare industry in a post-COVID world.
Adoption of such technologies will empower the entire healthcare sector to help the healthcare workers continue their operations strategically, and compassionately which they do the best, while making the world a better place.
