What Is SaaS, And Why You Need It!
If you are not in IT, you may not be familiar with the term Software as a Service (SaaS) yet you are likely using at least one of the thousands of SaaS solutions available. The explosion of SaaS applications has come about in recent years thanks to “Apps” and the subscription model mentality. Do you use Gmail? How about Spotify for music or Netflix for movies? Do you use a tool for managing patient relationships like Salesforce Health Cloud?..... the list goes on.
These companies have built a better mouse trap and continue to innovate, bringing ever increasing value to their customers. The reason customers are willing to pay for it is simple - a quality solution with no long term commitment or fiscal risk. The continued development and maintenance required is all provided by the vendor under the subscription. It's a win win.
It's also a win for enterprise organizations where the advantages of the SaaS model also helps them save on development and support costs and allows them to focus on their business. Again, it’s the responsibility of the vendor to focus on providing the best solution for the problem while also handling all the support and infrastructure.
So why do organizations need SaaS? Let’s say your company makes widgets, you likely outsource several tasks to experts, e.g legal or IT work. While it’s very important work, it doesn’t make sense to employ the various experts (Intellectual Property lawyer, IT network, etc) and the office space required when they aren’t fully utilized. In the same vein, why would you build and host software to manage your patient relationships when you can use a tool like Health Cloud? It’s easy to get started, and when you consider the 24x7 support, the hardware for hosting, as well as the development required to maintain a best in class solution, it just makes sense. It’s an advantage to the organization fiscally, while also allowing the company to focus on their valued differentiators.
So why should healthcare be any different? Healthcare organizations should be focused on delivering amazing, high quality care not trying to support the thousands of available healthcare solutions available. The less hardware (servers) or software they are required to support the more they can focus on care. This is what SaaS provides, amazing solutions that usually don’t require upfront purchases of hardware or software and have a monthly subscription fee, where costs are based on resources consumed. This subscription approach that grows with the organization means low fiscal risk allowing for experimentation, innovation and focus.
- Initial lower cost, with no big upfront expense
- Faster time to implementation
- Ability to scale with the organization
- Limited need for support staff
To conclude, due to the benefits listed above SaaS can be a great option for anyone from a small healthcare department to a whole healthcare system. At Keriton, we not only believe this, we live it. Our focus is providing the best feeding management solution possible with superior lactation analytics and patient engagement, but that requires us to integrate with Hospital EMRs. For this, we turn to a SaaS solution called Redox, who provides the simplest way for vendors and provider organizations to exchange healthcare data. This allows us to focus on making an amazing product and not be distracted by the complexities and subtleties of integrating with Cerner, eClinicalworks or Epic.
Would you like to know more? Contact us