15 Feb 2023

Collaboration

IHiS advances API-first strategy with Google Cloud and Accenture to drive open and secure healthcare ecosystem innovation


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Google Cloud, Accenture, and the Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS) have announced a collaboration to enhance population health, delivery of care, and patient engagement. The three companies have established an agile and advanced architecture, supported by application programming interfaces (APIs), to make data, applications, and services securely and readily available, when and where they are needed.

As the technology agency for Singapore's public healthcare sector, IHiS has adopted an API-first approach to facilitate data capture across healthcare systems and partners with healthcare providers to deliver analytics tools and mobile applications that are used by healthcare staff and patients.

Under a multi-year agreement, IHiS is tapping Accenture's expertise to deploy Apigee, Google Cloud's API management platform. Apigee helps to unlock data and services across the systems managed by IHiS, which can then be accessed by developers to create new applications and capabilities. The implementation enables IHiS to eliminate data silos and achieve fluid interoperability across Singapore's healthcare ecosystem.

With Apigee, developers can, for instance, use IHiS' APIs to build applications and tools – underpinned by integrated workflows and artificial intelligence (AI) models – to optimize staff allocation and workload. One example is the Facial Recognition Automated Visitor Management System (FRAVMS), which has been launched by IHiS and SingHealth to facilitate a smoother and more efficient visitor registration process. Apigee provided the framework that accelerated FRAVMS's development, while increasing its scalability, minimizing the need for ongoing maintenance, and futureproofing its integration architecture.

Ng Wee Wei, Southeast Asia Market Unit Lead and Country Managing Director, Singapore at Accenture, said: "The pace of innovation and technology is creating unlimited possibilities for businesses to build a digital core powered by cloud, data, and AI. Organizations like IHiS can now scale as quickly as they need to, while reinventing their businesses for competitive differentiation. Our interoperable enterprise blueprint for IHiS, which is based on Apigee, integrates IHiS' systems, applications, and capabilities under a single strategy – enabling real-time data-driven insights and more agile operations to empower their people and their partners to deliver personalized, efficient, and informed care."

APIs allow software systems to quickly exchange information within and across organizational boundaries, reducing the need for duplicated datasets that take up costly enterprise storage space. Since the data is pulled from its original source, organizations must also adopt a secure API architecture to minimize risks.

To give IHiS full visibility over the use of its APIs, which include validating data flows and ensuring that access is only granted to authorized users, Google Cloud has built security features like encryption key verification, identity brokering, traffic monitoring, and threat and vulnerability detection into the Apigee platform. IHiS' Apigee deployment will therefore support its existing efforts to safeguard patient data in compliance with regulations like Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and Healthcare Services Act 2020, as well as international standards for exchanging healthcare information electronically, such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Health Level 7 (HL7), and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM).

Sherie Ng, Country Director, Singapore, Google Cloud, said: "A secure-by-design API management platform that standardizes data and facilitates information exchange across healthcare systems, services, and applications is becoming just as essential as a stethoscope or an X-ray. With Apigee empowering API-led connectivity at scale, IT staff and developers can now focus on upcycling data and helping their organizations overcome staffing shortages, improve transitions between in-patient and out-patient care, and advance preventative care and precision medicine. We look forward to continuing our work with IHiS and Accenture to promote data interoperability and open innovation to the wider healthcare ecosystem. This could then drive new forms of public-private sector collaboration to address other gaps across the care continuum, creating a more efficient and effective healthcare system for all."

 



About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world's leading businesses, governments, and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth, and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent and innovation led company with 738,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world's leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise, and global delivery capability. We are uniquely able to deliver tangible outcomes because of our broad range of services, solutions, and assets across Strategy and Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X, and Accenture Song. These capabilities, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients succeed and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners, and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.


 About Google Cloud

Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.


About Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS)

IHiS is a leading healthcare technology firm that integrates resilient, intelligent, secure, and cost-effective technology with people and processes to make healthcare more efficient, more inclusive, more accessible, and safer for patients.

IHiS supports more than 70,000 healthcare users in Singapore's public healthcare sector to bring about healthcare transformation through the use of technology. We harness multiple healthtech domains – health AI, telemedicine, electronic health records, digital health applications, and more, to push the boundaries of transformative health to improve population health, make healthcare more sustainable, and enhance the patient experience.

 

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