What are the top CPaaS use cases in healthcare?

Communication needs differ from industry to industry, and organizations approach communications in different ways as well. Communications platform as a service, or CPaaS, can help organizations customize their business processes and meet specific use cases.

In the healthcare industry, for example, a central topic of discussion is patient privacy, which is covered by certain privacy and compliance regulations. A communications vendor that wants to cater to CPaaS use cases in the healthcare field needs to comply with specific regulations and sign a business associate agreement. Once these requirements are met, CPaaS use cases then fall under three distinct areas.

Scheduling. A common CPaaS use case in healthcare involves scheduling and authenticating patients. Scheduling can be done online, by phone or through text messaging. Each of these communication methods can be automated and streamlined using CPaaS and APIs. Patients can schedule an appointment online, receive notifications about the appointment and get a record of the appointment after it's over, all through text or email.

Consultation calling. One of the main focal points of telehealth communications is consultation calling, which usually involves a doctor conducting an online video session instead of a physical visitation.

The ability to authenticate the patient, integrate with patient records, prescribe medication and loop in an external expert, friend or family member of the patient are important aspects. This use case may also include recording the session. Also, doctors could consult with each other via video.

Sometimes, these consultations offer better healthcare services to rural or remote areas, where certain specialists or experts are unavailable. In these cases, a doctor or nurse physically located with the patient acts as an assistant for a specialist on the remote call. These consultation calls can be seen as specialized video contact center implementations.

Interpretation, assistance and annotation. In some cases, patients may not speak the local language or be able to speak at all. Tourists, foreign workers, those who are hard of hearing, speech impaired individuals and other groups may be unable to communicate with caregivers. Telehealth can connect to a remote assistant, who can translate or interpret using sign language or other visual communication, acting as a bridge between patient and doctor.

Annotation is a similar use case, where remote scribes annotate an interaction by handling all medical writing while the doctor treats the patient.