There is a huge demand for healthcare organisations to be flexible, agile and fast to react. Unified Communications (UC) helps you do that by bringing together different technologies to run in sync so that your organisation can run effectively, productively and efficiently.
Unified Communications has been proven to benefit most businesses but healthcare organisations are slower to make the change, generally because of the bureaucracy involved but that doesn’t mean its not worth pushing it on the agenda. It can transform healthcare organisations by giving their patients and enhanced quality of care and improve collaboration between colleagues (medical and support staff.)
How does Unified Communications help Healthcare organisations?
Increase in Productivity – Doctors are usually busy seeing patients and aren’t always at a desk, sometimes they are at patient’s houses or on the wards. Your Doctors need to be able to still do their job but keep everyone in the loop, hopefully without having to stop and find a laptop. With a mobile or tablet device they can update patients records as needed, on the spot. They could even upload photos. It means that all of the team are kept in the loop without having to wait for someone to find a laptop, sit down and update notes.
Enable Tele-Medicine – You’ll be able to offer video conference facilities to view patients without them having to be in the same room as you. This will speed up diagnosis, save time on follow-ups and reduces delays on being able to be seen, or avoid patients being late
Effective Patient care – You can enable uninterrupted care with unified communications, regardless of where their attending physician may be; whether in another department or even at home. Rather than consultants being called in, they can look at the files remotely, assess and decide the next course of action. It means that there wouldn’t be a delay in an action because of travelling in then assessing.
Improve Patient experience – Unified communications enables an ease of communication throughout the hospital, surgery or practice which means that it reduces confusion if a patient has a query. By using real-time communication, the answer can be found quickly by the notes, a quick call or simple instant message, from any device. By connecting doctors and staff together, you can use unified communications to significantly reduce inefficiencies.
Increases Inter-departmental collaboration – some colleges may be based on the road, seeing patients in their homes, working on different shifts or departments or simply, working at sister-hospital. Wherever they may be, they need to be able to share information and communicate, quickly.
With Unified Communications, your staff can call or message their colleagues from any device. You can even access your business phone system features such as call recording. Advanced Unified communication solutions will enable you to integrate with popular business applications such as your CRM.
Any interaction with the organization has an impact on the patient experience, so those communications need to be seamless.
Improves Patient Communications – Rather than your patient waiting for a letter, you can use unified communications to send text reminders for appointments and email secure links for test results. You can even updates all of their notes and give them access if you wanted to. It’s certainly a “greener” approach but also enables a speedier response time for patients.
A simplified example of Unified Communications
A simplified example of Unified Communications would be Google:
As a search engine, you can find the answers to your burning questions within the blink of an eye. They take it further with Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Hangouts and the use of a Gmail account for instant messaging. You can even place phone calls.
This is a really simple and easy way of thinking about Unified Communications; you have all of these systems at your fingertips, seamlessly integrated into one easy to use interface.
Similarly, with Apple products (a touchy subject for some), you can seamlessly integrate your iPhone, iMac and iPad accessing each from the other.
You’ve got it; it’s Unified Communications.
What can Unified Communications merge?
Unified Communications can bring together multiple forms of communication channels such as voice, video, software, data etc using one device. We have gone past the desk phone and email being enough.
Some key features of Unified Communication features:
- Instant messaging
- “Availability” – knowing if the person you need to contact is free or busy
- Conferencing applications
- Teamwork applications – to coordinate work on group projects
- Video conferencing
- Voice & click to call (from any directory, e.g. Outlook)
- Voice messaging – to e-mail and phones
- File sharing
- Softphones
- Directory integration
Do you already use Unified Communications?
There are plenty pieces of software out there than you can utilise using one device which would make your business operate quicker BUT if you had one piece of software which did everything, that would put the “unified” in Unified Communications.
The idea behind Unified Communications is to “optimise business processes” and nothing does this better than an all-in-one solution.
Best Unified Communication tool for Hospitals
Without a doubt, Mitel MiCollab is the best unified communication tool for Hospitals. MiCollab has specifically been designed with certain industries in mind, one of them being healthcare, particularly hospitals.
Mitel’s APIs let you securely integrate communications and collaboration capabilities into existing health information technology (HIT) systems, you can simplify workflows and reduce delays when coordinating patient admission, transfer, handoff and discharge.
Best Unified Communication tool for Doctor Surgeries
Horizon Collaborate and Wildix Collaboration are great unified communication tools for Doctor Surgeries.
Whilst MiCollab is an extensive tool designed specifically for healthcare organisations, it comes with a premium price tag associated with it. Both Horizon and Wildix offer many of the same features but at a more affordable price for a Doctor Surgery.
We recommend you demo both as they have similar features but from a pricing point of view; Horizon is best when there are 1-15 users, whereas Wildix is best when there is 15+ users. Both are easily scalable for growth so ultimately; it would be down to user preference.
Best Unified Communication tool for Dental Practices
Horizon Collaborate and Wildix Collaboration are great unified communication tools for Dental Practices.
Whilst MiCollab is an extensive tool designed specifically for healthcare organisations, it comes with a premium price tag associated with it. Both Horizon and Wildix offer many of the same features but at a more affordable price for a Doctor Surgery.
We recommend you demo both as they have similar features but from a pricing point of view; Horizon is best when there are 1-15 users, whereas Wildix is best when there is 15+ users. Both are easily scalable for growth so ultimately; it would be down to user preference.