TeqTalk

Hi everyone, welcome back to TeqTalk, where we are about to embark on an electrifying journey into the heart of innovation. I am your host Jas Kaur and today I am extremely excited to host the third episode of TeqTalk.

On today’s podcast, we are shining a spotlight on the home healthcare industry and trust me, we have got some game-changing insights in store. Get ready to buckle up as we dive into the world of data-driven revolution. With our special guest, a true titan of the healthcare realm, by our side, there is no limit of inspiration and wisdom we are about to uncover.

Grab your drink of choice, settle in, and let’s uncover how innovation is reshaping the industry, how data cloud is reshaping the industry. Let’s sail in. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our distinguished guest, Rahul Chatterjee to the podcast. Rahul is the Director of Healthcare and Life Science at Teqfocus. With over 30 years of experience in crafting technology solutions, especially for the healthcare and life science industries, Rahul is a true expert in his field.
Today, Rahul will be sharing his invaluable insights on home healthcare transformations, offering us into a glimpse of the future of the industry. Let’s dive into the enlightening conversation and unlock Rahul’s wealth of knowledge together. Stay tuned.

Hi Rahul, so good to see you. How are you doing today?
I’m doing good, Jas. Great to see you on this podcast. Thank you.
Thanks, Rahul. Where are you these days and thanks a lot for coming into this?
So I’m traveling, Jas, on work, have come to the UK for a short while.
Oh, that’s amazing.

Alright, so let’s start with our podcast, which is based on the home healthcare industry and how Salesforce Data Cloud is improving that industry and completely reforming it. So Rahul, can you discuss more on the market of home healthcare, how big it is? Do you have some numbers which can help all of our viewers to know?

Yes, Jas. And the home healthcare market in the US, is not only very big, but it’s growing rapidly. So according to a report by Grandview Research, in 2022, the market was estimated at around $143 billion US dollars. And Jas, this market is going to grow by about 7.5% till about 2030.

Wow, that’s a big number.
Yes. And the other interesting feature is 67% of all the home health care expenses in the US were covered by public insurances like Medicare and Medicaid. And the remaining 33% came out of out-of-pocket expenses and the private insurance. So government is actually a very, very big promoter of the home health care in the US.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure, looking into the numbers, what numbers you have given right now. So there must be a lot of scope of improvement and putting technology into this industry.

That’s right. And as a lot of this growth in home health care in the US has been fueled by technology. And interestingly, because of the rising health care costs in the US, there was a boost to home health care, but COVID accelerated this because during COVID, and the years following it, there were significant investments made in digital technology.

Yeah, so my next point was related to COVID only, that we have seen that there is significant increase in home health care demand post-COVID.
Yeah.

Yeah, so that’s a very important trend, Jas. So if we look at the key trends in the home health care market in the US, there would be three of them predominantly. One. There is an increasing demand. So demand is constantly increasing. And why is that? One, the aging population increase. So the number of senior citizens in the population mix is increasingly getting higher. And the senior population, Jas, find it easier to get health care at home. They have mobility issues, visiting a physician, practice, a hospital. That’s number one.
Number two. Chronic diseases are more prevalent among senior citizens, the geriatric population, I’m referring to blood pressure, diabetes, hypertension, and home health care is an ideal treatment for chronic conditions.
I know, I can completely relate to it, Rahul, because going to an ER, it’s… like consumption of nine to 10 hours minimum. So it’s a kind of pain going to ER. So I’m glad that the home healthcare industry is growing and it’s serving people, those who are in need.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And the other big trend after the growing demand is technology adoption and availability of technology. So this has been an absolute game changer because you see, Home health care involves delivering care remotely. A lot of it would have been impossible if technology innovations like remote monitoring devices, telehealth, AI/ML algorithms for prediction, all this would not have been there.
Correct, right. So I think these are the major key trends, do you think anything else? or you would like to talk more about the challenges the home healthcare industry is currently facing?
Yes. So there are lots of challenges. The biggest challenge would be the availability of skilled manpower Jas. Now why is that a problem? That’s a problem because traditionally the home healthcare industry has been plagued with long working hours, low wages and Jas, it’s not easy.
Just imagine within a hospital, it’s a closed system and you have a team of doctors within the walls of the hospital. But for home care, you need a medical professional, you need a non-medical professional, you need a community social worker. It’s very complex. So availability of skilled manpower is a very, very big issue. And one of the key challenges.
Yes, one more challenge would be regulations and reimbursement models. So let me try and explain. Let’s say in the US, home healthcare is funded by Medicare, Medicaid, which are government agencies, and then you have private insurance. Then you have in the US federal laws, you have state laws, you have local regulations. So a home healthcare company needs to really navigate all of these challenges.
If we continue to discuss this, I think the one big challenge would be, while a lot of technology solutions are available, Jas, most of these technology solutions work in silos, they are fragmented. We are going to discuss later on in this podcast, Jas, that doesn’t really help, that actually makes it more difficult because now your physician has a lot of data he doesn’t know what to do with. Just imagine for a second that if every minute your glucose level readings come to your physician, what is he going to do if you don’t give him any insights? I mean, he’ll be overwhelmed with data.
Lot of data, right. That’s the challenge itself.
Yeah, so you are saying that the fragmented data and disparate data is one of the major challenges, even technologies, different technologies are working together to incorporate this challenge and to see how this can be made into a single unified source. And in our further discussion, we will be seeing and we will be having more discussion on that part.
Absolutely, Jas. You summarized it very well. There is a proliferation in technology. There are lots and lots of sensors, variables, devices, platforms, apps. But the real part of all this is if you are able to get more insights about the patient. We are going to discuss this.
Okay. So quickly, can you also touch on how technology can benefit home health care? I know you already discussed a little bit. If you can elaborate more on a couple of more points, that will be really helpful.
Yes, Jass. So on the slide, we have listed out some of the categories of technology that benefit home health care. Let me try and give you examples about a few of them. So At the core of the technology solutions for home health care is the home health care software solution. That’s number one on our list. And just think of this as an ERP. Think of this as an enterprise solution which a home health care agency can use to manage all its work. And what does it do? It’s like this solution does for the home health care industry. What SAP did for manufacturing, for example, or Salesforce revolutionized CRM. This is as powerful as this. So it helps you to manage care, create a care plan, deliver quality care, manage compliance, manage regulations. And in the US, some of the top home healthcare solutions are like access care, you have Companies like WellSky, AccessHome, Salesforce itself has a very powerful platform, HealthCloud, and then you have solutions like Epic Systems. These are among the top players in the US market for home healthcare.
If we take a couple of other examples, Jas, you have healthcare apps. Healthcare apps would include apps like medication management, nutrition, And this is possible because of the penetration of smart mobile phones, Jas. So the patient has a mobile phone, which is a very, very powerful device. You can have multiple apps on his phone to connect these devices to the care providers like the doctors and nurses. So basically, what home healthcare solutions do is address the productivity issue, efficiency issue. communication issue and care coordination between multiple stakeholders.
Yeah, very well framed up Rahul. This is very insightful and I’m pretty sure that our viewers are really going to enjoy the session with such great insights from your side. Okay, so we have briefly described how technology can benefit home health care. And I would like to move ahead and see that what are the various sources from where we are getting data of a patient who is seeking healthcare service from any care provider. So yeah, Rahul, I’ll leave it up to you to discuss more on that.
Perfect. So what do you see on this slide, Jas, is the home healthcare solution at the center. Now, what does it do? We briefly discussed it has a lot of features and functionalities, which include creating a care plan for a patient, delivering care, care management, scheduling, coordination. This solution will also have a mobile app for the field worker, which is a community worker who is in the field, who visits the patient in his home.
Solutions like this, Jas, would also have a portal for the patient and his family, reporting, analytics, compliance management. Now that’s a lot. And I told you there are some very good solutions in the US for home health care, including the Salesforce Health Cloud. But that’s not enough. In addition, a home health care solution needs to integrate with a host of other applications, Jas. And that’s what you see all around in this particular slide. So let me just give you an example.
Sure, go ahead.
Let’s say there’s an electronic health record EHR. You might use a home healthcare solution from Salesforce, which is HealthCloud, but you would still need to integrate with an EHR, like let’s say Cerner or Epic. Why is that? The patient goes to a hospital, the hospital has its own system, which is an Epic or a Cerner. So all this medical data is on the system Jas. So you would need to integrate it so that even for home healthcare, your care providers have access to these data.
Right, so Rahul, just I’m curious, so are these the only data sources? I believe that there are many more data sources other than these and we have shown these just for our viewers to see that these are many in number and it could be more, even more from where the data is coming in, right?
Yes, so Jas, when we recently looked at some home health care agencies and their requirements, in the US, we found that even for a good home healthcare solution like Salesforce Health Cloud or Access or AlayaCare, there could be at a minimum, Jas, 25 to 30 external systems to be integrated.
Wow, that’s again a big number.
Yes, not including lots and lots of devices. I’m not even counting the devices. I gave you an example of integrating with EHR. But the same healthcare solution, let’s say Salesforce Health Cloud, may have to integrate with a e-training platform called Nevvon, or a HR and payroll management solution like Viventium. This is happening because, Jas, all of these agencies, home healthcare players, many of them take a best-of-the-breed approach. So they would use a CRM from Salesforce, they would use Health Cloud from Salesforce, but they may use a payroll solution from some other market leader.
Yes. Okay, so what we are describing here is, even if you use Salesforce Health Cloud, the data can be coming from Salesforce environment plus external data sources as well. So it becomes.
That’s right.
It becomes, the system overall becomes very, very complicated. And in our further slides, we will see how this can be centralized, how the data can be centralized and can be more effective.
That’s right. You’re right, Jas, it’s extremely complicated. We’ll take a very simple example.
Yeah, I just wanted to, that was my another question. So could you give an example end to end and that way it will be easier for our viewers to… understand that, okay, this is a place where the issue is, and that’s how Salesforce data cloud, which we are going to talk more about in our further slides, can be implemented and can help this industry further revolutionized.
Yes, Jas. Let’s take a very simple use case of a patient who suffers from diabetes. So for this use case, let’s talk about our friend, John Baker. and John Baker is a diabetic patient. And even for this very simple management Jas, we will find there are so many interventions, so many activities that need to happen. And what’s an ideal situation, but what is also the situation where everything could go wrong simply because there is no integration. So let’s look at some of the interventions. So John is at home. He has a continuous glucose monitoring device. He uses it to measure his blood glucose level. And then he notices an abnormal reading, which could be a fall in glucose level or an increase.
Now he needs to share this data with his physician or with his health care professional, could be a registered nurse. For our example, we have assumed that John’s physician is Dr. Smith and John needs to communicate this glucose level data to Dr. Smith. Now Dr. Smith having found the abnormal reading needs to make an adjustment in John’s insulin dose but John uses a smart insulin pen to take his dose which means we must find out a way to communicate this to John’s pen as well. Typically, if he does it through a message, he would message his glucose level to the doctor. Doctor would message him back. He would still need to adjust the dose in the insulin pen.
And that’s not all. John also has a medication adherence app to track. Is he taking his medicines in time? That’s another challenge. So that needs to be updated also. And finally, the most important thing, there is a home health care solution. provided by the agency that provides care to John. And that care plan needs to be updated. So even for such a small diabetes management case, Jas, you see there is so many interventions, so much updating to be done. You’re right.
Now, the biggest problem is, in the absence of a integrated system, we have several independent activities which need to share data. Now, in the earlier scenario that I pointed out to you, Dr. Smith, John’s doctor, would have to take a decision regarding his insulin dose only based on the glucose level reading coming from the continuous glucose monitor. But that is incorrect because Jas an abnormal glucose reading would have come from multiple reasons. It could have come because of John having done an exercise.
Yeah, maybe like behavioral changes or yeah, something like that.
Totally. You rightly mentioned it, a behavioral change. John generally went to a party and had a good time with his friends and there was a lot of alcohol intake. That could alter his glucose level readings.
Diet change, lifestyle change, or for all you know, he could have missed some of his insulin injections. Now, if Dr. Smith doesn’t have access to this data in real time, he’s going to take a decision regarding John’s insulin dose only based on a single parameter, which is glucose level reading from the continuous glucose monitor. This is not correct.
This is not correct because, he doesn’t have an access. So if you just go back to the previous slide, Jas, yes, this is what we are showing, how a platform like Salesforce Data Cloud can do a lot of integration and rectify this situation.
So in this scenario, what happens is, Jas, there is a reading from John’s continuous glucose monitor. It’s an abnormal reading. That reading is captured by Data Cloud and compared with data from multiple other sources, EMR data. What is John’s medical history? What are his historical charts? What has been his physical activity in the last 24 hours? What has been his diet? And then Salesforce Data Cloud or any other comparable platform. would actually share with Dr. Smith precise, personalized insights based on a 360-degree view.
Absolutely. So yeah, so I think the main problem right now with home health care is regarding the data. The data is present in so many different silos, systems, and it is not integrated into or it is not combined. And they do not have proper. one single source of truth because of that, it’s causing a lot of problems, I would say in terms of delays and not being able to provide the personalized message and all those steps. So I think data is the problem and this can be very much fulfilled by Salesforce Data Cloud and Salesforce Data Cloud can really help in integrating different sources and can really help in providing the unified and single source of truth.
Absolutely. And the power is the real-time nature of the data Jas. So there is a fall in glucose level, it’s captured by the monitor and immediately Salesforce data cloud is able to churn out insights and precise recommendations.
Right. So that’s amazing, Rahul. This use case which you have described is really mind-blowing the way you have described and put it out really will help our viewers to understand that, okay, home health care has these many sources and it can be integrated into a single platform and which is powered by AI, CRM and trust. And from there, the single source of truth can be further found. And on top of that, a lot of AI work and ML work can be done basically to understand the next recommended action.
Yes, Jas. If we just look at the slide that you are presenting now, you will see that there’s a set of data which is coming from clinical sources. But that’s not all. Because in this integrated holistic approach, Stella, who’s John’s home health coordinator, she’s a member who’s assigned from the agency to manage John. She’s also able to see from the care plan. That there has been a fall in John’s glucose level reading. She can take multiple actions only because of the integrated nature of this system, Jas. One, she can schedule a meeting for John with John’s dietitian. It’s a teleconference, it’s a virtual session. The dietitian gets onto a call with John. She’s able to make changes in John’s diet and update his nutrition app. Stella can also schedule a consultation with Dr. Smith where he can get onto a teleconference with John and assess is there any defect in the way he’s using his insulin pen? He can watch John live and make changes and give him advice. Now look at the other aspects. Stella can enroll John in a patient education and empowerment program, encourage John to visit online diabetes communities and share his views.
So what is happening, Jas, is in addition to the clinical data, Salesforce Data Cloud is now able to capture lifestyle, behavior, social media kind of data also.
Right. To have a total view of John’s profile, both clinical and non-clinical.
Yeah, that’s amazing. If I see technology overall, what we were… before 10 years and what we are now, there is a dramatic change. And it’s amazing to see that there is so much of automation and so much of machine learning programs coming up and helping all the industries shaping their needs.
Yes. And Jas, the one message which I would like our viewers to take away is technology has been in existence for a while. It will continue to proliferate, the real part of the technology comes when you are able to integrate the data and create a unified profile, because then you get insights which was otherwise impossible, as you said. Some of the insights were impossible 10 years back.
Right, and I think this is a common problem across industries. It’s not only with home healthcare, it’s across industry that there is so much of data within organizations and even outside that it’s not handled properly. So I think Salesforce Data Cloud is really doing a good job and we’ll discuss more over the next slides that what exactly Salesforce Data Cloud on very, very high level and how it works.
Yes, you know, Jas, we have been talking about Salesforce Data Cloud. Why don’t you quickly explain all about Data Cloud, how it works, how would the architecture look like? That should be interesting for our viewers.
Sure, so we have the slide ready. On high level how Salesforce Data Cloud works. So if you see here, there are a couple of components here. Again, it’s on very high level. It’s not that easy to implement, though it requires all kinds of special skills. And again, it’s amazing because I have personally worked on it and I really liked how it is built.
So if you see the data sources, left-hand side data sources, so there are a lot of data sources. So… the very first step is to identify from where the data is coming in. Rahul, you have already described the data can come from EHR, data can come from any patient portal or a lot of sources we have already discussed.
So first, identification of data sources. If you see, there is another tab that says connect and prepare. So this is a place where you have to connect within the system. So within data cloud, there are more than 100 inbuilt connectors and which uses MuleSoft Anypoint platform. And there are more than 100 to 150 connectors which you can easily connect and get the data put in into the data cloud.
It could be either your real time or batch data. And once we move on, it is harmonizing of data. So once you have connected data sources to the data cloud, and it’s not always needed that you take 100% of the data from data sources. So what all relevant fields and relevant data you require for making a unified profile, you just need to get those data. and you harmonize the data. So when we say harmonize, there is again a big list. How do we do that? So we create different data spaces, data streams are created and you create a lot of data mapping. And one of the ways to get the unified profile is doing identity resolution, which will help in creating the duplicates and you put on a lot of filters.
So basically this is a mechanism which will help you create a unified profile. And then the magic comes if you see here, it is unified profile. So there are a lot of sources from one person is enrolled into a lot of places. So with different names, with different email IDs. So now Data Cloud helps in getting that unified profile. And there is now no confusion. The data is clean and neat. And on top of this unified profile data, you can further activate.
When we say activate, you can do a lot of things like if you wanna send some kind of personalization messages, emails, or you want to have some kind of smart segments using a different modeling, different machine learning model, so a lot of things can be created here.
And this is Einstein, and in Salesforce, we have Einstein prediction, Einstein discovery where you create your own model and do predictions and lot of actions you can take from on top of this unified profile. So this is how the Salesforce data cloud works on a very, very high level.
So Jas, one of the applications which you shared is very interesting for home health care, and that is the home health care agency would be able to use the power of Salesforce data cloud to actually do a lot of campaigns and communications with their clients, which are extremely segmented based on each unique profile. So that would be very powerful, a great customer experience.
Yeah, so I think once you have unified profile and you can do multiple things, endless things. So now there is no fear of sending messages to the same person multiple times, because you know that there is just one single profile, you can find the next best action. So we’ll discuss more on our further slide, what are the things we can do.
So yeah, this home healthcare solution, it’s like a complete architecture diagram. And most of the things Rahul, you have already discussed, but there are a couple of things I would like to just highlight here.
So if you see the left-hand side, we have a lot of sources from where the data comes. which are related to home healthcare industry itself. So if you see a referral management system and a learning management system and different payment processing, HR, payroll, all those systems, data is there.
And now this is just an example that few of the systems are integrated with Snowflake and the data goes to Snowflake and data cloud can further be integrated to Snowflake. And Data Cloud can be integrated to multiple databases and different sources as well. So just for an example, we have taken Snowflake here.
And the payment processing system, it is mentioned here that we are taking real-time data. So it’s like streaming data. As soon as it is created, it goes into Salesforce Data Cloud immediately in real time. And payroll processing system, it might have some other data source or another database and the data is coming. So if you see in real time, Salesforce Data Cloud has a lot of different data sources with different IDs and different parameters. And now when it is going to Data Cloud, it creates unified profile like how we have discussed in our earlier slide.
And since we have taken healthcare solution into the picture, so if you see here experience cloud and patient portal, so in that we can have your family, and patient portal. We have basically the community for external professionals and a lot of other things we can do.
Again, this is provided by Salesforce. And the more important thing here is focusing on Salesforce data cloud. Once it gives the clear cut data, on top of that, you’re pushing that data into different other portals, which are again Salesforce built. For example, Salesforce health cloud. So it gives all the parameters related to the health industry, for example, it can help in getting point of care, help in getting a lot of things like referral management, clinical data capture, and a lot of other stuff, It has those kinds of features.
Now, if you’re integrating Health Cloud directly with all of these systems, it might not be that efficient in combining the profile because it has its own different features. So it is always recommended that we should have Salesforce Data Cloud. to get the sources and get the source data intake, unify, make it clean, clear, crisp, and then put it further onto different other sources.
Sure.
You see here is Einstein. So even data cloud has inbuilt reporting and dashboard system and Einstein prediction and Einstein discovery can be implemented on top of it to find the next best action, whatever you have to take. So it’s amazing. And you have CRM analytics, which is nothing but your reporting and analytics. If you want to go into advanced reporting, you can use this software, which is again powered by Salesforce. So this all section, if you see it is completely Salesforce platform, which gives you a complete picture or complete end-to-end solution for the home healthcare.
This is amazing, Jas. You know, the way you explained, now I am beginning to realize what makes Salesforce such a powerful platform for home healthcare. Because while there are some of the solutions I spoke about are actually point solutions just for home healthcare, but I think the power of Salesforce is because of its ability to scale up.
Right. It’s like end to end.
Yes. You do not need anything external things other than the data, obviously, which we are taking, as it provides you complete solution end-to-end with automated next best action and some kind of AI modeling as well.
Amazing. Okay, so just to follow up on the last slide. So this is again, when you take data from different sources. So it is specified that from data is coming from EHR, data is coming from payroll system and all those, it’s completely based off home healthcare. And this is how we make the data streams. Data streams are again, the way you get the data into data cloud. And once it is done, see here, you can create smart segments in health cloud after getting a unified profile. So you just have to write what kind of segments you want. You just have to mention. For example, provide me a list of people, those who are 65 plus and are diabetic. It’s going to provide you all list from the source of data, which has a million of data. So in a simple line, you can write, and you get the unified. I mean, you get the list of people. So that’s amazing again.
And based on this smart segment, you can pass it on to marketers who can again promote or they start sending out newsletters or any promotional things or even they can send out messages and the communication you know it’s like endless.
The way to communicate with people nowadays is completely endless. There are so many different ways and then based on the response of the customers or response of the patient or whichever industry we are focusing on you can have different dashboard and parameters to see what kind of response they have given and how they are behaving to your emails and complete.
And after that, it can also provide you with the next best action. It’s again, the same thing, the one the last one which gives you the overall portal journey of the customer and it will give you the dashboard and report and show that okay, your campaign, whatever you sent has really worked or not worked or complete stats based on that.
Very interesting. So I think that was end to end. And it was an amazing session, Rahul, to have insights on what exactly home health care in the US look like. And thanks a lot for sharing all the details. Before we wrap up, do you have anything at the end to tell for our viewers?
Oh, yes, Jas. Thanks. This was an amazingly interesting session. So to quickly summarize, the future of home health care in the US looks very exciting. The key factors that will continue to shape the future are increase in aging population, increase in chronic conditions, the demand for personalized and convenient care at home, and more importantly, the power of the health digital technologies, the innovations, the tech solutions and their adoption. That itself is going to be a game changer. Just some analysts have estimated that by 2032, the global home healthcare market would be almost $790 billion.
Oh wow, that’s again a big number.
And huge, huge.
Yeah, yeah.
USA is expected to have about 40% of this global market. That’s one trend. And the other interesting thing is it’s a McKinsey research that out of the spending by Medicare, almost 25% of Medicare spending in the next couple of years will be for home health. So even the US government is increasingly that its expenses on home health care as a percentage should increase to bring down the overall cost.
And Jas, I think we are just scratching the surface of the potential of AI ML, remote monitoring and smart devices. And I think we are looking at a very, very exciting time for home health care and especially technology related innovations in.
In 2023, we witnessed a surge in introductions to AI and advanced ML technologies. Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, the focus will shift completely towards implementation, marking a pivotal moment in evaluation of industries like home healthcare. The future holds immense potential for transformation. With the correct strategy adoption of these technologies, paving the way for revolutionary changes in patient care, operational efficiency, and much more. With that said, we have come to an end of episode 3 of TeqTalk, Salesforce Data Cloud series.
Thank you for tuning into TeqTalk and I hope you really found today’s discussion on home healthcare industry enlightening and inspiring. Join us next time as we dive into another major industry exploring the endless possibilities of innovation. Until then, stay curious, stay inspired and keep exploring the boundless potential of technology. This is Jas Kaur signing off. See you in the next episode. Thank you.