With the ongoing emergence of new ground-breaking technologies including AI, telemedicine platforms and digital transformation within medicine, 2019 looks set to be another year which pushed the boundaries within healthcare.
However, while we’ve seen leaps and bounds within the healthcare offered to patients, the processes that exist for medical professionals to secure employment seem out of sync with the work that’s carried out by such individuals. The technological changes we have seen within the industry shows a workforce that is committed to advancement, however HR processes for healthcare employees still involve laborious, manual processes, which often halt the pace of professional progression.
The slow-moving pace of document verification for international healthcare and the impact that this can have on the professional migrant community has been readily documented by the World Health Organisation where it states:
“All people who plan to leave their country of origin in order to work as doctors or nurses in another country have to produce a certificate of good standing and proof of registration in their own country. This information is sometimes used to estimate the emigration potential (the number of people who plan to leave their country), but available evidence shows that there is a large gap between the intention to emigrate and actually doing so. This gap can be explained, for example, by difficulties in finding a job or in getting one’s qualification recognised in the destination country.”
Verification is of course in place to protect healthcare professionals and their patients, that we must all agree on. However, existing processes are actually hurting those that it seeks to help by being too slow, too manual and too repetitive - particularly when the availability of technology today means that they really don’t need to be.
Professional Migration Within Healthcare
The push and pull factors around skill shortages within the medical industry mean that a huge number of healthcare professionals migrate to pursue employment opportunities in other countries. As a result, healthcare employers face a huge influx of skilled medical professionals from overseas in order to cater for the demand within their regions. Add to this the fact that over 50 per cent of CVs contain misleading information and that around 4-6 per cent of applications are a result of employment fraud, and the need for fully verifying and checking each new hire becomes highly apparent.
To set the scene, consider the workforce here in the UAE. The majority of healthcare workers originate from overseas and within the population as a whole, 88.4 per cent belongs to the expat community. Of course, due to the nature of the healthcare industry, each and every employee here in the UAE must have their details and qualifications fully verified before employment can commence. This means that for every worker and every job application, medical licences, good standing certificates, accreditations and educational qualifications must be checked, confirmed and verified.
These checks are completely essential and their mandatory nature safeguards patient care and the working environment of other medical professionals. It’s without surprise that these background employment checks are a huge burden on applicants, former employees, issuing authorities such as universities and government regulators. Particularly as these checks are done with each new professional migrant, each job change, and also in the instance that verified documents expire or are misplaced.
The manual, analogue processes that are involved in document verification seem somewhat archaic in comparison to the leaps and bounds seen within the medical industry itself; that is, until now.
The New Standard within Document Verification
TrueProfile.io is a new creation within the document verification industry, which seeks to abolish repetitive background check by using cutting-edge technology. This new technology is powered by the DataFlow Group, a familiar name within the healthcare space, as document verification has been carried out by the DataFlow Group since 2006. Since its inception, the DataFlow Group has completed over 1 million employment background checks for applicants, the majority of which originated from the healthcare industry.
The DataFlow Group saw the friction caused by the current processes for document verification and so, TrueProfile.io was born. It is an applicant and employer-centric professional platform, which places the needs of these individuals at the heart of its offering. The platform is built upon Ethereum blockchain, which remedies the need for continual background checks, while employers and employees reap the benefits of a professional platform.
How can TrueProfile.io assist professional migrants within healthcare? The process is simple: an applicant signs up on the TrueProfile.io platform as a ‘Member’, enters their details and submits the necessary documents for verification. Once these are returned with a positive verification, the documents are stored on blockchain and are now known as ‘TrueProofs’. This simply means that they have the verified stamp of approval from TrueProfile.io and can now be used as part of a job application.
TrueProofs can be housed on a professional profile, which is all part of the TrueProfile.io member offering, known as myTrueProfile. A myTrueProfile page offers the perfect opportunity for members to showcase their credentials in a positive light, while knowing that the information offered is fully verified. The information can be downloaded or shared via a link with a potential employer, in order to build instant trust.
The use of blockchain means that once verified, a members’ documents are secure, cannot be tampered with and the information is owned by them. This provides a fully portable professional profile, which can be used time and time again throughout an individual’s career.
TrueProfile.io’s document verifications can be done at any time, either during the application process or in order to expedite the professional migration timespan; they can be carried out ahead of applying.
Assisting Healthcare Providers
The other side of the coin is of course HR professionals who collectively carry out countless background checks on a continual basis. By using TrueProfile.io as part of their hiring practices, an employer becomes a TrueProfile.io ‘Business Partner’, which offers a number of benefits, most namely, complete assurance that healthcare employees are qualified for the role they will be carrying out.
In addition, time-to-hire is significantly reduced which in turn improves the efficiency of HR teams, allowing them to get on with more human-centric tasks. TrueProfile.io is quick and easy to use, while displaying all of your applicants submitted verifications in a user-friendly dashboard. This allows you to see the right, qualified and verified hires for your business, meaning that hiring decisions become a lot easier to make, with added peace of mind.
Future Prospects
We are ready to welcome employers and applicants within the healthcare sector who are keen to be part of the new standard offered by TrueProfile.io. Getting started is easy, simply visit our website and sign up as either a Business Partner or a Member. There’s no compromise on the quality or depth of background checks with TrueProfile.io - they still remain as thorough as ever. Instead, its new technology means that the final hurdle in recruiting and placing essential healthcare staff across borders simply ceases to exist.
