3 tech opportunities in health and human services

By Rachel Eckert, SLED consultant

Connecting the dots between the news and opportunity can be a tricky endeavor, but those headlines can often translate into an opportunity if you know where to look.

We took a close look at state and local opportunities in the IT sector during immixGroup’s recent Government IT Sales Summit. The session on Selling to SLED—Updates and Innovations included insight from Robert Mancini, chief information officer for Prince William County, Va., and Garrett Histed, senior director of State, Local and Education at VMware.

Below are three areas where technology can have a major impact on the health and human services market:

Opioid Crisis

We’ve all seen this issue continue to rise over the past several years. Behind the headlines of street and prescription drugs, is an issue with the systems and databases that track these substances.

Nearly every state has a statewide prescription drug monitoring system that requires input from doctors, pharmacists, therapists, hospitals and any other health care worker who dispenses opioid prescription medication.

The IT element for you is in the management of the database that houses this information. A database won’t help the health care industry make smarter decisions unless they perform analytics on their data. Law enforcement will also have a need for prescription analytics to help hard-hit areas like Ohio make real-time decisions. This is exactly what the Governor’s Cabinet Opiate Action Team is doing through their Ohio Automated Prescription Reporting System.

Telehealth

This is all about improving the delivery of healthcare services in rural areas, areas historically underserved for even the most basic preventative care. Already 26 states have placed a parity law on the books that enable doctors and insurance companies to bill telehealth services the same as in-person services.

States will need to ensure they have adequate broadband to support the cloud-based programs that will be running the services. All of this will need a security wrapper to ensure patient data is kept confidential and secure.

Homelessness

States and major metro areas have been combatting a growing homelessness problem and struggling with ways to help lessen the population. Analyzing that population can help states and metro areas make more informed decisions about programs and activities to help the population.

The technology connection is in the data collection happening in the field that requires software accessible via mobile device anytime / anywhere. That data is then fed back to a central database for analysis. The analysis should then be made available to field workers to respond on the fly in real-time.

State and local governments rely on technology in their service to the citizen. Find those critical areas and connect your technology to their needs.

Click here to watch the full session on Selling to SLED—Updates and Innovations.

To learn more about how we can help you sell technology to SLED organizations, click here.

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