Salesforce Health Cloud Aims to Make Patient Data More Accessible

“We’re delivering a platform for innovation”, said Bobby Amezaga, senior director of product marketing for the Salesforce Service Cloud.

But it’s merely the latest entrant into the field of health information technology, which has flourished but failed to achieve its promise of making health care match the level of service consumers expect from other sectors. Salesforce Health Cloud is a cloud-based patient relationship management solution that enables providers to gain a complete view of the patient with integrated data from electronic medical records (EMRs), wearables and more; make smarter care decisions; engage with patients across their caregiver networks; and manage patient data.

Dr. Joshua Newman, a one-time practicing physician who is now the chief medical officer at Salesforce, is gearing the company’s efforts toward an area that he says is sorely lacking in modern medicine. It would also allow health providers and patients to stay in frequent communication so that patients won’t have to wait hours or days for answers on, say, prescriptions or therapy. “We’ve had enough time and validation, and we’re seeing the same kinds of use cases we’ve seen in other industries”.

Now Salesforce is updating its Service Cloud, which caters to customer service agents and their managers. The company continues to sell its general objective software.

“You can’t do these things with existing technology”, Newman said. First, it was on revenue management, then it moved to medical records.

A dashboard to track patients and their conditions and medications.

Compliance with regulations such as HIPAA.

The catch is that health care is a splintered market with multiple electronic record systems already in place. An internal messaging system allows medical providers to communicate and share information, and lets patients and their family members join or initiate those conversations.

“You can see who inside the hospital has been working with this patient, and you can also bring in people from the outside, such as a spouse or daughter, for collaboration”, Newman explained. Salesforce Chatter integration aims to make the process more social.

Development partners include Philips, Accenture, Deloitte, PwC and GE Healthcare.

The Service Wave Analytics app uses analytics powered by the Salesforce Wave platform to provide visualisations of the main performance indicators of customer service agents, such as call handling times, customer satisfaction and if an issue was solved in one call.

The Service Cloud Lightning Console is expected to be generally available by the end of this year and included in the Service Cloud Enterprise Edition or greater. Pricing will be announced at that time.