The rise of digital front door technology is revolutionizing operational efficiencies and patient experiences in Canadian healthcare. This technology is allowing hospital operations to enter into a new era of improved and faster access to care.
To improve operational and quality of care at a reduced cost, government officials and large healthcare systems will need to focus on embracing these technologies. One of the most significant changes in healthcare technology is Akinox's Digital Front Door, the next generation of digital front doors, which offers a range of features that will facilitate efficient and personalized care.
Keep reading to learn more about Akinox's digital front door and its benefits to patients, providers, and the Canadian government.
What Is a Digital Front Door in Healthcare?
A traditional digital front door is an online platform—sometimes referred to as a patient portal—that allows patients to interact with healthcare providers, access data, set appointments, and manage appointment follow-ups. The goal for any digital front door is to facilitate efficient, personalized care; however, according to the Angus Reid Institute, 29% of Canadian adults experience chronic difficulty gaining access to healthcare.
Akinox offers an effective digital front door that acts as a care companion; it provides access to a range of convenient, self-service, patient-centric tools, allowing all Canadian patients access to the care they need.
Our digital front door makes these options readily accessible and more, allowing patients to:
- Create their own healthcare profiles, allowing for communication and care preferences to be saved and easily accessible by healthcare workers.
- Coordinate care for themselves and their family members.
- Manage and schedule appointments through questionnaires backed by advanced logic and intelligent automation to route the patient to the correct healthcare professionals and drastically reduce the time spent waiting for an appointment.
- Access follow-up care instructions for themselves and anyone in their circle of care.
- Provide feedback on their experience, allowing hospitals to adjust and improve the patient experience from real patient data.
Let’s look at a real-life example: Say a patient is experiencing symptoms but is unsure who or how to reach out for diagnosis and care. With Akinox’s digital front door, the patient can instantly communicate symptoms, answer clarifying, personalized questions, receive relevant care recommendations, and schedule an appointment in minutes. This not only improves the patient experience and provides faster access to care but also alleviates strain on health systems by reducing unnecessary ER visits, time-consuming manual input, complicated patient rerouting, and many other tasks that impact care availability.
3 Key Benefits of Using a Digital Front Door
A revolutionized digital front door benefits everyone, from patients and providers to health systems and public health officials. Some of the key benefits of using a digital front door are:
1. Better Patient Experience
Digital front doors improve the care experience not only for providers but also for patients. Using Akinox’s self-service questionnaires puts patients in the driver’s seat, helping them manage their own care more efficiently and effectively by acting as a guide as they navigate the complex healthcare system.
For example, patients can get oriented to the right professional by answering a few quick questions about their needs whenever and wherever they need to. They can access personalized preventive care advice, schedule their own appointments, and manage their own aftercare.
Akinox’s user-experience-driven design has been intentionally created to increase adoption of a digital front door for patients by providing a clear and easy-to-navigate platform. This eliminates friction and confusion for the patient and allows for a seamless patient experience. Additionally, with advanced dictation and translation, multilingual patients will have access to fast, clear, and accurate healthcare information.
Each of these benefits leads to an efficient, top-quality care experience for patients, which in turn improves outcomes and satisfaction. Patients also gain the opportunity to share feedback, which helps enhance healthcare delivery by offering insight into potential roadblocks and areas for improvement.
2. Greater Operational Efficiency
Healthcare leaders are always in need of ways to improve efficiency—and Akinox’s digital front door does just that.
Our technology streamlines real-time and asynchronous consultations, optimizing interactions among healthcare professionals and automating routine administrative tasks. By reducing administrative burden, healthcare facilities have the capacity to provide efficient care to more patients without increasing the strain.
In working with the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), Akinox was called in to support its goal of implementing a user-friendly system to optimize remote patient access to specialists. As Antoinette Ghanem, senior telehealth advisor at the Telehealth Coordination Center of the MUHC describes, this “single teleconsultation service portal” allows for a single integration for the entire teleconsultation process.
Before using this system, the MUHC had the capacity to perform 70-80 remote ultrasounds per year. Exams had to be performed in real time, which required at least one doctor, a technologist, and logistical support on both the patient and provider end. After the implementation, the MUHC was able to perform 1,000 ultrasounds per year with three times fewer personnel involved.
3. Improved Population Health
Then there’s the larger goal of population health. Akinox’s digital front door integrates personal, clinical, and lifestyle data, centralizing it in one location, which provides a truly holistic view of each patient’s health to enable more precise care decisions.
Access to this data supports wider public health goals and contributes to better population health outcomes. Additionally, it helps address health disparities, leading to equitable health outcomes across population groups.
Enhancing Care with Akinox’s Digital Front Door
The benefits of using a digital front door are clear—but not all solutions are created equal. There are countless patient portal solutions on the market, and some are simply that: a portal that lacks any personalized care recommendations.
Akinox’s digital front door is more than just a front door—it’s like a true care companion that allows you to go beyond the door of the patient experience. Our solution can be customized for each healthcare organization’s unique needs, meaning it works the way you work. All interactions can be personalized and tailored to the way you operate.
Plus, like all of Akinox’s products, our digital front door is built with the same gold security standards we adhere to as a company. This way, government officials and healthcare organizations can rest assured that private data remains just that: private and protected.
Want to learn more? Get in touch to discuss how our digital front door can help you improve efficiency and achieve better care outcomes—all while reducing costs.