From the Obamacare website crash to the Theranos scandal, the attempt to digitize America’s draconian healthcare ecosystem has been mostly unsuccessful but remains vital for the future of health. Software giant Salesforce believes it is equipped to help modernize the industry and has been working alongside its healthcare and life sciences customers to tackle their challenges. Today, Salesforce launched an extension of its healthcare innovation arm, Patient 360, which aims to bring patients and healthcare companies into the modern day. With hopes to enable companies in the healthcare sector with cloud-based e-commerce suites, Salesforce’s latest portal is one of the few tech platforms that is HIPAA compliant.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud SVP Luke Ball says Patient 360 will help automate consumer healthcare patterns and bring costs down for patients and providers. “This is especially relevant with medical devices like insulin checkers and getting refills; a really natural thing to do is to set it and forget it,” Ball said. “We all have these patterns in our own consumer life of getting orders, whether they’re evergreen, termed, or one-time. I can get these recurring orders for things I value, and I know I’m going to need in the future.”
For providers, Patient 360 offers management tools aimed at improving productivity with patient insights, such as history, samples, and social determinants. For brands traditionally distributed through brick-and-mortar retailers, the digital marketplace allows them to go directly to consumers. For patients, access to a digital marketplace cuts out the middleman when shopping for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Salesforce says it has already seen some success with customers like orthopedics manufacturer Ovation Medical, who accelerated their processing time by as much as 200%
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Samar (suh·mr) Marwan is a freelance news writer for Fast Company, covering business, environmental, social, political, health and wellness, trending, and breaking news. Previously, she covered cannabis and technology as the assistant editor of technology at Forbes Magazine
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