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In our latest Industry Spotlight, Lizzie Cernick talks with Paul Martin and Manuel Reyes from Cognizant about what sets the company apart and why the right data is so important in healthcare.
When Paul Martin, head of UK health at Cognizant, first came to the UK from the United States 22 years ago, he didn’t expect to stay for long. After launching his career in Boston in healthcare software, he was invited to London to help develop technology at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in 2000. With so many opportunities to make a difference in healthcare in the UK, he eventually made the decision to continued to forge his career there and three years ago, he joined Cognizant to build its health and social care offering in the UK. The goal is to combine the company’s data and digital expertise with healthcare empathy, to translate high-quality data into tangible benefits for patients.
“It’s exciting because we’re really bringing this new business to the UK,” explains Martin.
“This is not your typical outsourcing consulting company, but a data-driven, digital business that is truly focused on healthcare.”
Like Martin, Cognizant’s chief architect for UK Health, Manuel Reyes, is also motivated by his desire to create better health and care services for people.
“I’ve been working in health technology since the late 90s, which includes work for large system suppliers, secondary care, maternity systems, community pharmacy and more,” he says.
“When I say healthcare IT saves and improves lives – I really mean it. We help clinicians help patients when they need it.”
Reyes joined Cognizant because they were in the market for the right reasons.
“I had the opportunity to expand my expertise around technology, but it was more than that,” he said.
“This company is really working to improve health, not just expanding for business reasons. It’s not about getting the best paying contracts, but the ones where we can make the biggest difference.
What makes Cognizant different?
While both Martin and Reyes agree that many digital businesses are doing ground-breaking work, they believe Cognizant stands out from the crowd.
“If you hire an AI specialist, they will know all about a machine learning model, but may miss the complexity of data in the NHS,” Reyes explained.
“The NHS is not a single organisation, but a network of thousands with different data silos and data needs. We provide pipelines to bring data together into something that can be used for a specific purpose. We have the ability to re-engineer processes around technology and in a health setting.”
Such processes are already used in health care, and, with the right data, can be expanded. For example, machine learning to process diabetic retinopathy scans can help clinicians prioritize their workloads and better serve patients who may be at the most risk, and need further assessment as quickly as possible. can.
“Better for patients and clinicians. For anything that is a repetitive task, the technology exists to automate it now, meaning clinical staff will have more time to spend on issues that require human interaction,” Reyes said.
However, for these processes to work effectively, the data must be of high quality.
“It all comes back to curating your data in a way that’s usable,” explains Martin.
“We have extensive experience taking all these different data sources and synthesizing them, but the results are only as good as the data you have.”
Cognizant recognizes that the NHS is committed to improving data quality, and this is one of the reasons they work closely with them.
“We see a lot of work towards interoperability. It’s not a solved problem, but it’s going in the right direction,” said Reyes.
For the next 30 years, he knows that healthcare leaders will continue to develop ways to use informatics, but that these opportunities can only be safely delivered on solid data foundations, meaning the opportunities are endless.
“Some people talk about explainable AI, so that it explains how it makes a decision. But how do we get it to the point where we can trust the process to deliver it, and how do we use and apply it?” he asked.
“It’s not just a technical question, it’s clinical, privacy and more. The broad spectrum of expertise that Cognizant has, gives it the ability to help its healthcare customers reach the right answers for them.”
By truly leveraging the expertise of data architects and data science specialists, along with a deep understanding of health and social care, the company will work with the UK health sector to maximize positive impact of these technologies, setting itself apart from others in the market.
Why is the right data so important?
High quality data is not only about accuracy, it is also about the ability to filter information that can be used by any system. While Cognizant’s partnership with the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One team (AMF1) team may not seem like the most obvious link to health and social care, for Martin and Reyes, it provides an excellent example of the effective use of data.
“A Formula One car going around a lap of a track has about 300 sensors, all taking readings,” Martin said.
“Every second that information is fed into the pit lane. And then, in real-time, is curated and pipelined back to their Silverstone headquarters.
On race days, teams use data-driven dashboards, reports and alerts to monitor performance, making real-time decisions based on the data they receive.
“We have teams within Cognizant working with AMF1 to build real-time views and decision-making systems,” Reyes said.
“The same logic can be applied to data used in health settings. I can take the reference to Aston Martin Formula One and put in the word NHS, hospital or patient. It is the mobilization of good quality data that enables all of this.”
For Cognizant, the next steps are working with health and social care organizations to determine exactly how the data should be used and how much needs to be curated.
“If, for example, an Apple watch collates continuous data into a GP record, it quickly becomes an enormous amount of information. What we do is take that data and make it usable, Reyes explained.
“The key here is releasing the right amount of data, to the right people, at the right time. These factors are fundamental to making good quality data insights available.”
Building on a solid foundation
To date, the company has worked on many projects to support the NHS, while fully supporting its Data Saves Lives strategy. In addition to working on the Covid Pass project, which helped to facilitate our exit from lockdowns in 2021, they have developed a close relationship with NHS Digital.
“We help them integrate data into their ServiceNow platform. For this work, we were nominated as Transformation Project of the Year with the ERP Today Awards,” said Martin.
Meanwhile, the company is also working on data pipelining, as well as discovery data platforms. Instead of ripping out and replacing systems, the company works with the NHS and its integrated care systems to use the assets that are already there.
“I have five customer Microsoft Teams accounts on my Cognizant system, so I can easily work with different customers,” says Martin.
“We’re embedded in organizations. That’s how we participate, collaborate and come together.”
For the NHS, behavioral and cultural change will be a key part of digitization success, and this is something Cognizant fully supports.
“We approach it from a service design perspective. We want to understand how or why someone will use it before we even design and implement any technology. What are you trying to solve? Who needs access? When? Why? These are the questions we need to ask from the very beginning,” said Martin.
Reyes agrees that everything needs to be led by clinicians and patients, not technology. For example, hospital smart cards are ideal from a design perspective, but not usability. Every 15 seconds a clinician wastes a smart card, hours if you include it,” he explains.
As the company quietly becomes better known and continues its focus on delivery, the ‘people first’ mantra will continue.
“Ultimately our goal is to look at pain points to understand where we can deliver and how we can support more effective services, leading to health empathy,” Reyes concluded.
Contact Cognizant:
Website: www.cognizant.com/uk/en
Twitter: @Knowing
Link: Know