Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare Updates in 2022 and 2023

Recent changes to the industry with a focus on value-based care and telehealth services have been the focus of MC4HC platform enhancements. We see several fundamental changes to the data model that enable providers to integrate frontline services more easily with the platform and user experience enhancements focused on care planning and service delivery.

In this article, I go into some critical changes that have either gone into General Availability (GA) in late 2022 or will go into GA sometime in 2023.

Updated Payor Data Model (GA October 2022)

The updated Healthcare data model included changes to claim entities involved in payor processes enabling partners to build their own payor apps or integrate into the MC4HC solution.

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/common-data-model-and-service/blob/main/common-data-model/schema/core/industryCommon/Healthcare/Financial/overview.md

Enhanced Virtual Health Data Tables (GA October 2022)

Support for Virtual Data Tables (VDT) was enabled for clinical, diagnostic, and financial FHIR resource tables with improved CRUD support. This would commonly be used to connect to clinical systems using OData v4 to allow for bi-directional integration to these systems, reducing the need to duplicate data within the Dataverse.

Improvements to integration with FHIR endpoints (GA October 2022)

Enables integration with FHIR endpoints using Azure Logic Apps via the Dataverse Healthcare APIs. This allows FHIR bundles with EHRs (Electronic Health Records) to be received via the Dataverse Healthcare APIs and transmitted, thus enabling full integration to MC4HC.

New Data Integration Admin Console (GA October 2022)

This allows integration to be simplified with a new administration console that allows the discovery of available health data integration components (APIs, Virtual Health Data Tables) and step-by-step guides for setup and configuration.

In a marketplace-like experience, it will enable the discovery of third-party APIs and connectors that integrate into MC4HC. This could be a new opportunity for vendors to provide certified connectors for MC4HC.

Provider Data Model Enhancements (GA October 2022)

The healthcare data model has been updated with new tables, attributes, and relationships for service providers.

This will enable more flexibility in building apps for clinical communications, appointment management, encounters, care team, procedures, and medication management.

Member Experiences for Payors (Public Preview February 2023)

With the industry shifting towards value-based care, the product focuses on delivering more insights and creating a more holistic member profile. The areas of focus for this planned change will be in:

• Primary Care
• Social determinants of health
• Pharmacy
• Home Health
• Behavioural health

Care Plan Improvements (GA October 2022)

Changes have been made to care plan creation with the ability to surface more details within the care plan.

Changes to the Care Plan enable new options for care plan creation, customisation, and a rolled-up view of patient goals and activities.

Better Teams Bookings Integration (GA February 2023)

Enhancements to the Bookings Graph API will enable features for booking services, staff, managing appointments and clients. This will allow Bookings Graph endpoints to be integrated with Dynamics 365 and Azure Bot scheduling workflows.

Unified Patient View (GA October 2022)

The Unified Patient view was promoted to GA in October last year.

This feature enables the ability to customise how patient clinical information is rendered with respect to the care team, it supports:

• Options for configuring the Cards that are displayed on a form:

• Configuration of the Patient Snapshot card

There are customisation options that allow the linking of related clinical records to the patient form, or rolling up of information to the patient form.

As well as options to manage the display of the Clinical Timeline control:

The documentation for Unified Patient View is available here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/industry/healthcare/configure-unified-patient-view

Summary

In 2021, many within the partner community lamented the loss of the healthcare industry accelerator built for Dynamics 365; however, in 2022 it became clearer that Microsoft had a strong vision for the future of the MC4HC platform.

It has been a rapidly evolving platform with innovations to tackle industry challenges in a post-pandemic world including changes to service delivery models, teleconsultations, care-of-time initiatives, and better member experiences.

These important changes have marked a major milestone for the platform, and we in the health and partner community will be watching very closely to see what is in store for 2023/24.