The healthcare industry handles massive volumes of data, including clinical and non-clinical data, from diagnostics and prescriptions to patient history, insurance, and even lifestyle patterns. However, this data is often scattered across multiple systems with providers, payers, and patients using different systems to fill in information, it leads to inefficient patient care.
Salesforce in healthcare is addressing these challenges head-on. While Salesforce health cloud provides industry specific solutions, real transformation happens through custom Salesforce healthcare development
Whether it’s integrating with Emergency Health Records (EHR) systems or using Einstein AI to automate workflows becomes easier. Custom Salesforce development reshapes the way healthcare organizations deliver care, communicate with patients, track records and protect sensitive data.
Let’s explore how Salesforce development is tackling real-world healthcare challenges.
Salesforce Health Cloud: More than Just a Platform
Salesforce Health Cloud is a cloud-based platform that connects healthcare teams with clinical and non-clinical (lifestyle data, insurance data, and more) information in one centralized location. It leverages AI-powered automation through tools like Agentforce and Einstein, for automating repetitive tasks such as sending reminders or scheduling appointments, suggesting preventive care options, all while keeping patient data unified and accessible.
The different sectors of the healthcare industry benefiting from Health Cloud include:
- Healthcare providers include clinics, ambulance services, and hospitals
- Payers such as insurance providers and the government
- Pharmaceutical companies
- Clinical research and trial companies
- Medical device manufacturers
What Does Salesforce Development Bring to Healthcare?
Salesforce development in healthcare isn’t just about activating default modules it’s about building functionality that speaks the language of your care delivery model
Wheather it’s building custom apps, integrating third-party systems, and automating operations to fit the unique needs of every healthcare entity. Here’s how different Salesforce products/tools can be developed for maximum impact:
- Health Cloud: Provides clinical data unification and patient care management.
- Experience Cloud: Helps with creating a custom patient portal for
- Einstein AI: This helps in predictive insights to anticipate patient risks and personalize treatment.
- Mulesoft: Seamless integration with EHRs, billing systems, and third-party tools
- Data Cloud: Unified view of all your patient records and data
When used together, these tools allow providers to create custom Salesforce solutions for healthcare to improve their operations as per their business needs that actually reflect how they deliver care, scale with their needs, and support better, safer patient outcomes
Solving Key Healthcare Challenges with Salesforce Development
1. Fragmented Healthcare Data
As healthcare data volume is huge, the fragmented data leads to inaccurate or misinformation, leading to improper care and endangerment of patients’ lives.
Salesforce Solution:
Custom Health Cloud development consolidates patient data in one place, allowing clinicians, nurses, and admin teams to view, update, and collaborate on care plans.
Moreover, developers can build shared dashboards, labels, and notes, allowing care teams to collaborate on a patient to improve patient care. Using Mulesoft integrations developers connect with EHRs to access a patient’s medical history, ensuring data accuracy and improving personalized care.
2. Lack of Predictive and Preventive Patient Care
Healthcare providers are reactive, treating an illness after the symptoms become severe. It leads to readmission for the same issues, an increase in treatment time, and higher costs.
Salesforce Solution: Einstein AI enables predictive healthcare by analyzing healthcare organizations to predict health issues. It uses real-world data from EHRs, patient visits, and more to predict future health issues or severe health risks to create a personalized preventive action plan..
3. Lack of a Proper Communication Channel with Patients
A major pain point of patients is difficulty reaching their healthcare providers, rescheduling appointments or receiving the timely update. This often leads to higher admission rates and operational costs. Improper communication channels or no appointment reminders can lead to distrust between patients and providers.
Salesforce Solution: With experience cloud, developers can build custom patient portals that allow two-way communication. Patients can build effective communication by messaging providers, reschedule visits, receive reminders, and ask follow-up questions all from one interface. Additionally, using tools like Flow Builder, can help in automating, reducing missed appointments and enhancing the patient experience.
4. Lack of Data Privacy
Data breaches in healthcare are unfortunately common and costly that includes cyber theft, hacking, data leaks etc. The HIPAA journal states the biggest data breach of 2024 was in Change Healthcare due to hacking, affecting the lives of 1.3 million people.
Salesforce Solution: By building a HIPAA-compliant Salesforce app with features like data encryption, audit trails, role-based access controls, patient consent management and role-based access control to ensure the safety of sensitive data.
Real-World Impact: Use Cases of Salesforce in Action
Barwon Health: Community Electronic Medical Record System (EMR)
Problem:
Barwon Health, an Australian regional health service provider with expertise in primary care, faces the issue of data fragmentation. As the data regarding a patient’s physical health, mental health, and billing/insurance is filed by different people using different systems. Thus, the providers do not have access to all pieces of information. The inaccurate data can lead to inefficient patient care. Moreover, with COVID-19, the number of patients using telehealth increased by 3000, and now patients expect the same flexibility of rescheduling or booking an appointment online.
Solution:
By developing a community EMR system using Health Cloud and Customer 360 platform to centralize data. Now, all the information about patient care is in one place, allowing healthcare providers to make changes or use the data to create personalized healthcare plans.
Moreover, it gives providers making home visits a glance at the patient’s needs, helping them equip themselves with everything they require for better care before reaching their home. It also plans to integrate billing systems next to reduce clerical work, increasing productivity while reducing chances of human error.
Its impact:
- Centralizing data with Health Cloud ensures no duplication of patient information into the systems and purchasing a large data warehouse. With access to unified information it enables providers to focus on improving patient care, research, and equipment.
- It also helps patients take more interest in their health with access to a personalized healthcare plan, reducing follow-up visits to the hospital.
Humana-Building Trust with Patients
Problem:
The world’s leading insurance company faces challenges of patient trust and uniting different teams- partners, caregivers, and more.
Solution:
It uses Salesforce Customer 360 to create an exceptional care plan for patients, employees, and partners. It uses Marketing Cloud for community engagement, sending patients with life-threatening diseases and tips to manage them. MuleSoft, API-led integration, provides a clear and organized picture of patients’ health data to care teams in one place, enhancing patient care. It uses Health Cloud to create a portal where patients with severe conditions and a team of doctors, nurses, and more have enhanced care so that, even if one person updates the patient data, such as medicine, everyone gets the update.
Impact:
It is rebuilding the lost trust patients have in healthcare organizations due to fragmented data by providing a unified platform for all.
John Muir Health-Enhancing Communication
Problem:
Patients of John Muir Health are finding it challenging to communicate with healthcare providers.
Solution:
The John Muir Health organization uses Health and Marketing Cloud to include real-time patient communication with their healthcare provider. It gives them access to using digital communication channels such as SMS or email, enhancing patient care.
Impact:
- The patients have the means to contact the providers as they prefer, asking them queries, or getting advice for their health problems.
Final Thoughts
Healthcare organizations switching to Salesforce are investing in patient safety, with outcomes such as reducing the legal costs borne by healthcare organizations due to patient harm. However, the most important benefit of centralizing data and streaming patient care is restoring the patient’s faith in healthcare. By partnering with experts in Salesforce healthcare development services, providers can build secure, interoperable solutions tailored to their care delivery models.