UPDATED 20:01 EDT / MARCH 09 2020

CLOUD

Salesforce updates Health Cloud with new analytics and relationship management tools

Salesforce.com Inc. today added several new features and capabilities to its Health Cloud customer relationship platform for the healthcare and life sciences industry.

The updates continue Salesforce’s strategy of building out unique offerings for different industries.

Among the new tools are a new Provider Relationship Management service for healthcare providers to keep track of their relationships with doctors and other professionals. Einstein Analytics for Healthcare, meanwhile, is a new analytics tool for providers and insurance firms that should help them to better understand their patients’ needs. Finally, there’s a new, no-code interoperability tool for healthcare providers on the Salesforce AppExchange that enables them to integrate siloed data into the Salesforce Health Cloud.

Salesforce’s Health Cloud was debuted in 2016 as part of the company’s effort to compete with the likes of Oracle Corp. and SAP SE with industry-specific software. It’s not difficult to understand why Salesforce is targeting healthcare, given that Americans spent more than $3.5 trillion on it in 2018 alone.

Salesforce boosted its Health Cloud offering just last month when it acquired a company called Vlocity Inc. for a reported $1.33 billion. Vlocity is built natively on Salesforce and serves six industries, including healthcare.

The new Provider Relationship Management service is meant to give healthcare organizations a more comprehensive view of each provider’s information, including data such as any affiliated healthcare organizations, facilities, education history, networks and operating hours. That can help to strengthen relationships with individual physicians or help payers manage their networks of physicians and keep track of where referrals are going.

There’s also a new Provider Search tool available that can help connect patients with the best care provider for their needs. Searches can be filtered according to criteria such as the availability, cost, location and specialty of each provider.

Einstein Analytics for Healthcare is for healthcare coordinators to analyze specific patients’ healthcare plans to try and find opportunities to improve health outcomes. For example, the tool might flag a patient who continually misses appointments, and organize a ride-share so that doesn’t happen again.

Finally, there’s Destinations, a new no-code integration tool that helps administrators integrate Electronic Health Record data into the Health Cloud with predefined data mappings.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that platform providers such as Salesforce have realized that healthcare is an industry that’s ripe for digital transformation.

“There’s too much upside and positive patient outcomes are at stake,” Mueller said. “Today it’s Saleforce’s turn to throw its hat into the ring with a provider management capability and Einstein Analytics. Customer uptake will be the key metric to watch for in a few months.”

Mueller’s colleague at Constellation Research, David Chou, said Salesforce’s Health Cloud was already quite mature in comparison to rival offerings thanks to its focus on engagement and interoperability for payers, providers and life science companies.

“The enhanced features will also support the announcement by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on the final regulatory interoperability rule, aiming to support patient access and sharing of their electronic health information,” Chou said.

Photo: PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay

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