Monash IVF Group launches 'Digital Front Door' for patients

Monash IVF Group has launched a ‘Digital Front Door’ that supports the entire patient journey with comprehensive and flexible digital patient pathways across complex fertility journeys.

The new technology and processes aim to provide significant gains in operational efficiency and elevation of patient and clinical experience.

Thierry Panthier, CIO Monash IVF Group, said, “As Monash IVF grows across Australia, supporting new teams to embrace the tech stack available to them is business-critical. My team’s role is to reduce the friction when we are onboarding new Monash IVF sites and support an enhanced patient experience that’s nuanced to a clinic’s unique workflows and team.”

Panthier’s team supports the broader business to ensure the fundamental technology platforms are scalable, practical and efficient as Monash IVF Group expands.

Monash IVF Group wanted to move beyond the basics of digitising forms and create an advanced digital experience for clinicians and patients alike.

Prior to the implementation of digital patient pathways, a significant challenge across Monash IVF sites was the sheer volume of phone calls and paper-based forms required throughout the patient journey.

“We consider taking a complex fertility journey into a seamless digitally enabled patient pathway as business-critical. It’s how we scale the support of clinics across Australia to leverage technology for repeatable data collection and dissemination to then enable our fertility specialists to focus on the patient’s fertility journey. A simple patient experience in a complex and scary fertility journey is essential” Panthier said.

To deliver on a streamlined patient experience that also reduced the burden on staff meant Panthier needed to elevate the role of his internal IT team from tech support to an internal partner supporting the Group strategy.

“My team’s role is to support clinics and doctors with flexible and comprehensive pathways that act as a first touch ‘digital front door’ for patients.”

At a practical level, this is removing the friction of data collection and information sharing between patients and clinicians. This means converting clunky paper forms, phone calls and physical booklets into a digital experience with high adoption rates across patient cohorts.

“Every minute our clinical teams are spending on paper forms and phone calls is a minute not being spent delivering patient care,” Panthier said.

Panthier’s team rapidly deployed a bespoke patient experience leveraging the Personify Care platform. The team supports a national group of clinics with unique patient workflows that are flexible to the changing dynamics of a patient’s journey and continuing COVID-19 impacts.

The workflows needed to be scalable, and to support various types of fertility journeys and patient cohorts from egg donors and surrogates, to those seeking to preserve fertility, and prospective parents and partners.

By leveraging the Personify Care platform, Panthier was able to create a scalable solution that’s fit for purpose and fits seamlessly into the Monash IVF Group’s technology stack with interoperability built into the platform.

Streamlining data management across the patient journey and integrating the data collected into Monash IVF Group’s core systems was essential.

“The combination of this approach and our partnership with Personify Care means that there is a significant reduction in the burden on staff and clinicians across the Monash IVF Group — including internal IT resources. Our teams have additional time to focus on high-value care for our patients,” Panthier said.

Image credit: iStock.com/fizkes