In this episode of Talking HealthTech, Peter Birch speaks with Rafic Habib, Managing Director for APAC and the Middle East at Clinovera, the healthcare division of First Line Software.

The conversation explores Rafic's extensive healthcare IT experience and delves into how Clinovera and First Line Software work with organisations ranging from start-ups to government bodies to address the challenges of healthcare data management.

The discussion covers the rise of generative AI and its applications, how to harness unstructured health data, the ongoing impact of interoperability standards like HL7 and FHIR, and the practical considerations for implementing new health IT tools within complex healthcare systems.

Key Takeaways:

🤖 Generative AI (Gen AI) is increasingly sought after by healthcare organisations. While the technology presents new opportunities, there is industry-wide uncertainty about potential applications and best practices, especially with sensitive health data.

👨‍💻 Clinovera provides a wide range of services, including Gen AI consulting, software engineering, interoperability support (with a deep focus on HL7 and FHIR), application architecture, and cloud integration across Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.

📄 Unstructured data, such as handwritten notes, scanned records, faxes, and PDFs, continues to be a barrier for efficient healthcare delivery. This type of data is pervasive in everyday practice and remains difficult to extract and integrate into electronic health records (EHRs) and health information systems.

⚙️ The team at Clinovera has developed AI-driven tools that can ingest, analyse, and structure unstructured data from multiple sources (including different languages and poor handwriting), turning it into interoperable formats like FHIR. These capabilities allow clinicians and healthcare administrators to more easily find, analyse, and leverage crucial patient data that would otherwise remain buried.

🔬 As organisations look to better integrate AI and automation, considerations like compliance, security, information governance, and the ability to deploy solutions on-site or in the cloud come to the fore. Customisation is key to meeting diverse and region-specific data requirements and regulatory standards.

⏳ The best time to engage engineering support and consulting, according to Rafic, is as early as possible — whether organisations are just shaping their digital health strategy or already knee-deep in a digital transformation project. Early, collaborative engagement with engineering partners ensures that real-world problems are addressed, and organisations benefit from broader expertise during planning, pilots, and scale-up.

Check out the episode and full show notes on the Talking HealthTech website.

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